value of one indian

so far my favourite of the course texts - short, sweet and a straightforward read! :)

the way orwell saw it was, he persecuted what he described as a rather benign-seeming animal to preserve his pride (and that of the empire's). yet what i find most interesting is, he does not recall the murdered Indian in his description of it as having a "preoccupied grandmotherly air" and being "no more dangerous than a cow." He "knew with perfect certainty that [he] ought not to shoot him." this, knowing that the beast has just violently dashed an Indian's body into the mud, seems to me to be quite incredible. it points to the fact that life is measured in very different terms in different settings. every life is (supposedly) equal in a nation, but in a colony, when judged against a magnificent gentle creature, an Indian's life really is worth nothing at all. while orwell does acknowledge his complicity in empire to the extent that he was glad the Indian was killed so that he was legally permitted to shoot the elephant, i think he does overlook this moral issue. yes, one could argue he was subscribing to the Eastern ways of attributing different value to different men (caste and hierarchy systems), or of the mindset that one life is quite insignificant given how many there are (in India for eg) - when in Rome do as the Romans do, but that does not reconcile with the British Empire's moral highhorse and their ideals of honour and justice, which is in fact the moral impetus for colonizing in the first place. clearly, the colonies are settings which corrupt the Englishman but perhaps it is more the drawing out of what is already present in him, than rendering him newly evil. however, i'm sure these are way more complex issues than i make them out to be.

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