Orwell's BBC broadcasts: Colonial discourse and the rhetoric of propaganda

Abstract

From August 1941 to November 1943 George Orwell worked in the Indian Section of the BBC's Eastern Service, broadcasting radio programmes to India. At this time of the Second World War, India came under real threat of invasion from the advancing Japanese, and there was anxiety in London that the loyalty of the Indian subjects of the Raj might not be relied on in these critical months. An important part of the work of the Eastern Service was propaganda, and the anti-imperialist Orwell found himself part of an institution and discourse devoted to encouraging Indian loyalty to the Empire. This article examines the rhetoric of Orwell's BBC broadcasts, and particularly the weekly news commentaries he wrote, as a special and especially conflicted case of colonial discourse, in which Orwell's commitment to the anti-fascist cause seems to run head-first into his commitment to the end of Empire. It also looks at the propaganda tropes through which the broadcasts seek to persuade their Indian listeners of where their interests lie in this national and global crisis.