HISTORY, LEGENDS & MYTHOLOGY

Bihar pays tribute to Orwell's Motihari

     London: What better way is there to honour a literary giant than by building a museum in his honour. That is what is happening in the case of George Orwell of "Animal Farm" and "1984" fame, for Bihar, and in particular the residents of the remote town of Motihari, where Orwell was born and brought up initially, have decided to convert his house into a museum, reports The Telegraph. As literary destinations go, "Orwell's Motihari" doesn't have quite the allure of "Shakespeare's Stratford" or "Wordsworth's Windermere", but civic dignitaries hope this may soon change. Until last year, when a troop of scholars and journalists arrived from New Delhi for the centenary of Orwell's birth on June 25, few people in Motihari had even heard of the author of Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four. Now, with the assistance of the local branch of the Rotary Club, the decrepit house where Orwell was born is to be restored and, finances permitting, converted into a museum. "We shall rebuild the place, restoring it the way it was when Mr Orwell was born here, and placing signboards outside to tell visitors his story," the paper quoted Debapriya Mookherjee, a leading Rotarian, as saying. Orwell left India as a one-year-old in 1904, never to return. He almost did in 1921, when he applied to join the Imperial Indian police, but he was rejected, probably because of his Left-wing, pro-Congress sympathies. "We have already written to the local government requesting permission to begin work and have received our first donation of 11,000 rupees for the work to begin," added Mookherjee.
-Oct 28, 2004    

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