George Orwell's heritage has no takers

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-family:="" arial="" font-size:="">MOTIHARI, Patna: Rich tributes were paid by poets, writers and intellectuals to the widely acclaimed novelist George Orwell on his 101st birth anniversary, here, on Friday. Orwell''s birthplace in Motihari continues to be a pilgrimage for the lovers of literature.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-family:="" arial="" font-size:="">Presiding over the function, Dr Srikant Prasoon lamented that the small town of Motihari was unable to do something tangible to immortalise the memory of Orwell, the famous son of the town.Orwell was born at Motihari on June 25,1903 as his father was in Indian Civil Service here. The house where he was born is still intact and it is a part of the hostel of Gopal Sah High School.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-family:="" arial="" font-size:="">Speaking on the occasion, a Muzaffarpur scholar Krishna Kumar Dubey, said that out of the eight novels, which Orwell wrote, two of them, 1984 and Animal Farm came to be acclaimed as pathbreaking literary works. He said: Orwell wrote novels of ideas with comic richness and the concern for social justice.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-family:="" arial="" font-size:="">Prof M N Jha said, Orwell''s Animal Farm was a unique political allegory and it enriched English literature with some of the pithiest comments on life in Communist states. "His words: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others is still relevant in the present society," he said. Several writers and poets spoke on the occasion.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-family:="" arial="" font-size:="">Ironically, Orwell''s birth place in this town is in a slum area and it has no meaning for the people in general or the government. No effort is being made to preserve this heritage. The district administration or municipal corporation does not even care to fix a marble plaque on this house so that the foreign tourists may not face any difficulty in reaching here.</span></div> </div>