NCERT Textbook: Non-Fiction: Freedom | Class 12 English Kaleidoscope - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

 Page 1


118/KALEIDOSCOPE
Non-fiction
INTRODUCTION
Non-fiction is virtually everything that we read as
literature but that does not come under the
categories of novel, short story, play or poem. Non-
fiction, then, is writing that is factually true. It
can include articles, editorials, reports, critical
essays and interviews, humorous sketches,
biographies and autobiographies, lectures,
speeches and sermons.
This section contains six non-fiction pieces, three
by established writers of the canon: George
Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence;
one each by Ingmar Bergman, Amartya Sen and
Isaac Asimov.
The themes are: freedom, stream of consciousness,
importance of the novel as a creative form, the
details that make film-making a creative art and
the argumentative tradition in Indian culture
based on the famous dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Asimov’s piece
talks of the universe of science fiction, correlating
it to accounts of mythical superhuman beings in
the pre-scientific universe which served to fulfil
the same emotional needs as science fiction does.
The purpose of such writing is to explain, analyse,
define or clarify something—to provide us with
information and to show the how and why of
things.
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118/KALEIDOSCOPE
Non-fiction
INTRODUCTION
Non-fiction is virtually everything that we read as
literature but that does not come under the
categories of novel, short story, play or poem. Non-
fiction, then, is writing that is factually true. It
can include articles, editorials, reports, critical
essays and interviews, humorous sketches,
biographies and autobiographies, lectures,
speeches and sermons.
This section contains six non-fiction pieces, three
by established writers of the canon: George
Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence;
one each by Ingmar Bergman, Amartya Sen and
Isaac Asimov.
The themes are: freedom, stream of consciousness,
importance of the novel as a creative form, the
details that make film-making a creative art and
the argumentative tradition in Indian culture
based on the famous dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Asimov’s piece
talks of the universe of science fiction, correlating
it to accounts of mythical superhuman beings in
the pre-scientific universe which served to fulfil
the same emotional needs as science fiction does.
The purpose of such writing is to explain, analyse,
define or clarify something—to provide us with
information and to show the how and why of
things.
2024-25
119/FREEDOM
Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom
George Bernard Shaw was a dramatist and critic.
His work as a London newspaper critic of music
and drama resulted in The Quintessence of
Ibsenism. His famous plays include Arms and
the Man, Candida and Man and Superman.
His works present a fearless intellectual criticism,
sugar-coated by a pretended lightness of tone. He
rebelled against muddled thinking, and sought to
puncture hollow pretensions.
What is a perfectly free person? Evidently a person who
can do what he likes, when he likes, and where he likes,
or do nothing at all if he prefers it. Well, there is no such
person, and there never can be any such person. Whether
we like it or not, we must all sleep for one third of our
lifetime—wash and dress and undress—we must spend a
couple of hours eating and drinking—we must spend nearly
as much in getting about from place to place. For half the
day we are slaves to necessities which we cannot shirk,
whether we are monarchs with a thousand slaves or humble
labourers with no servants but their wives. And the wives
must undertake the additional heavy slavery of child-
bearing, if the world is still to be peopled.
These natural jobs cannot be shirked. But they involve
other jobs which can. As we must eat we must first provide
food; as we must sleep, we must have beds, and bedding
in houses with fireplaces and coals; as we must walk
through the streets, we must have clothes to cover our
nakedness. Now, food and houses and clothes can be
1 1
1 1 1
G.B. Shaw
1856-1950
2024-25
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118/KALEIDOSCOPE
Non-fiction
INTRODUCTION
Non-fiction is virtually everything that we read as
literature but that does not come under the
categories of novel, short story, play or poem. Non-
fiction, then, is writing that is factually true. It
can include articles, editorials, reports, critical
essays and interviews, humorous sketches,
biographies and autobiographies, lectures,
speeches and sermons.
This section contains six non-fiction pieces, three
by established writers of the canon: George
Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence;
one each by Ingmar Bergman, Amartya Sen and
Isaac Asimov.
The themes are: freedom, stream of consciousness,
importance of the novel as a creative form, the
details that make film-making a creative art and
the argumentative tradition in Indian culture
based on the famous dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Asimov’s piece
talks of the universe of science fiction, correlating
it to accounts of mythical superhuman beings in
the pre-scientific universe which served to fulfil
the same emotional needs as science fiction does.
The purpose of such writing is to explain, analyse,
define or clarify something—to provide us with
information and to show the how and why of
things.
2024-25
119/FREEDOM
Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom
George Bernard Shaw was a dramatist and critic.
His work as a London newspaper critic of music
and drama resulted in The Quintessence of
Ibsenism. His famous plays include Arms and
the Man, Candida and Man and Superman.
His works present a fearless intellectual criticism,
sugar-coated by a pretended lightness of tone. He
rebelled against muddled thinking, and sought to
puncture hollow pretensions.
What is a perfectly free person? Evidently a person who
can do what he likes, when he likes, and where he likes,
or do nothing at all if he prefers it. Well, there is no such
person, and there never can be any such person. Whether
we like it or not, we must all sleep for one third of our
lifetime—wash and dress and undress—we must spend a
couple of hours eating and drinking—we must spend nearly
as much in getting about from place to place. For half the
day we are slaves to necessities which we cannot shirk,
whether we are monarchs with a thousand slaves or humble
labourers with no servants but their wives. And the wives
must undertake the additional heavy slavery of child-
bearing, if the world is still to be peopled.
These natural jobs cannot be shirked. But they involve
other jobs which can. As we must eat we must first provide
food; as we must sleep, we must have beds, and bedding
in houses with fireplaces and coals; as we must walk
through the streets, we must have clothes to cover our
nakedness. Now, food and houses and clothes can be
1 1
1 1 1
G.B. Shaw
1856-1950
2024-25
120/KALEIDOSCOPE
produced by human labour. But when they are produced
they can be stolen. If you like honey you can let the bees
produce it by their labour, and then steal it from them. If
you are too lazy to get about from place to place on your
own legs you can make a slave of a horse. And what you do
to a horse or a bee, you can also do to a man or woman or
a child, if you can get the upper hand of them by force or
fraud or trickery of any sort, or even by teaching them
that it is their religious duty to sacrifice their freedom to
yours.
So beware! If you allow any person, or class of persons,
to get the upper hand of you, he will shift all that part of
his slavery to Nature that can be shifted on to your
shoulders; and you will find yourself working from eight to
fourteen hours a day when, if you had only yourself and
your family to provide for, you could do it quite comfortably
in half the time or less. The object of all honest governments
should be to prevent your being imposed on in this way.
But the object of most actual governments, I regret to say,
is exactly the opposite. They enforce your slavery and call
it freedom. But they also regulate your slavery, keeping
the greed of your masters within certain bounds. When
chattel slavery of the negro sort costs more than wage
slavery, they abolish chattel slavery and make you free to
choose between one employment or one master and another
and this they call a glorious triumph for freedom, though
for you it is merely the key of the street. When you complain,
they promise that in future you shall govern the country
for yourself. They redeem this promise by giving you a vote,
and having a general election every five years or so.
At the election two of their rich friends ask for your
vote and you are free to choose which of them you will vote for
to spite the other—a choice which leaves you no freer than
you were before, as it does not reduce your hours of labour by
a single minute. But the newspapers assure you that your
vote has decided the election, and that this constitutes you a
free citizen in a democratic country. The amazing thing about
it is that you are fool enough to believe them.
Now mark another big difference between the natural
slavery of man to Nature and the unnatural slavery of
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118/KALEIDOSCOPE
Non-fiction
INTRODUCTION
Non-fiction is virtually everything that we read as
literature but that does not come under the
categories of novel, short story, play or poem. Non-
fiction, then, is writing that is factually true. It
can include articles, editorials, reports, critical
essays and interviews, humorous sketches,
biographies and autobiographies, lectures,
speeches and sermons.
This section contains six non-fiction pieces, three
by established writers of the canon: George
Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence;
one each by Ingmar Bergman, Amartya Sen and
Isaac Asimov.
The themes are: freedom, stream of consciousness,
importance of the novel as a creative form, the
details that make film-making a creative art and
the argumentative tradition in Indian culture
based on the famous dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Asimov’s piece
talks of the universe of science fiction, correlating
it to accounts of mythical superhuman beings in
the pre-scientific universe which served to fulfil
the same emotional needs as science fiction does.
The purpose of such writing is to explain, analyse,
define or clarify something—to provide us with
information and to show the how and why of
things.
2024-25
119/FREEDOM
Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom
George Bernard Shaw was a dramatist and critic.
His work as a London newspaper critic of music
and drama resulted in The Quintessence of
Ibsenism. His famous plays include Arms and
the Man, Candida and Man and Superman.
His works present a fearless intellectual criticism,
sugar-coated by a pretended lightness of tone. He
rebelled against muddled thinking, and sought to
puncture hollow pretensions.
What is a perfectly free person? Evidently a person who
can do what he likes, when he likes, and where he likes,
or do nothing at all if he prefers it. Well, there is no such
person, and there never can be any such person. Whether
we like it or not, we must all sleep for one third of our
lifetime—wash and dress and undress—we must spend a
couple of hours eating and drinking—we must spend nearly
as much in getting about from place to place. For half the
day we are slaves to necessities which we cannot shirk,
whether we are monarchs with a thousand slaves or humble
labourers with no servants but their wives. And the wives
must undertake the additional heavy slavery of child-
bearing, if the world is still to be peopled.
These natural jobs cannot be shirked. But they involve
other jobs which can. As we must eat we must first provide
food; as we must sleep, we must have beds, and bedding
in houses with fireplaces and coals; as we must walk
through the streets, we must have clothes to cover our
nakedness. Now, food and houses and clothes can be
1 1
1 1 1
G.B. Shaw
1856-1950
2024-25
120/KALEIDOSCOPE
produced by human labour. But when they are produced
they can be stolen. If you like honey you can let the bees
produce it by their labour, and then steal it from them. If
you are too lazy to get about from place to place on your
own legs you can make a slave of a horse. And what you do
to a horse or a bee, you can also do to a man or woman or
a child, if you can get the upper hand of them by force or
fraud or trickery of any sort, or even by teaching them
that it is their religious duty to sacrifice their freedom to
yours.
So beware! If you allow any person, or class of persons,
to get the upper hand of you, he will shift all that part of
his slavery to Nature that can be shifted on to your
shoulders; and you will find yourself working from eight to
fourteen hours a day when, if you had only yourself and
your family to provide for, you could do it quite comfortably
in half the time or less. The object of all honest governments
should be to prevent your being imposed on in this way.
But the object of most actual governments, I regret to say,
is exactly the opposite. They enforce your slavery and call
it freedom. But they also regulate your slavery, keeping
the greed of your masters within certain bounds. When
chattel slavery of the negro sort costs more than wage
slavery, they abolish chattel slavery and make you free to
choose between one employment or one master and another
and this they call a glorious triumph for freedom, though
for you it is merely the key of the street. When you complain,
they promise that in future you shall govern the country
for yourself. They redeem this promise by giving you a vote,
and having a general election every five years or so.
At the election two of their rich friends ask for your
vote and you are free to choose which of them you will vote for
to spite the other—a choice which leaves you no freer than
you were before, as it does not reduce your hours of labour by
a single minute. But the newspapers assure you that your
vote has decided the election, and that this constitutes you a
free citizen in a democratic country. The amazing thing about
it is that you are fool enough to believe them.
Now mark another big difference between the natural
slavery of man to Nature and the unnatural slavery of
2024-25
121/FREEDOM
man to man. Nature is kind to her slaves. If she forces you
to eat and drink, she makes eating and drinking so pleasant
that when we can afford it we eat and drink too much. We
must sleep or go mad: but then sleep is so pleasant that
we have great difficulty in getting up in the morning. And
firesides and families seem so pleasant to the young that
they get married and join building societies to realise their
dreams. Thus, instead of resenting our natural wants as
slavery, we take the greatest pleasure in their satisfaction.
We write sentimental songs in praise of them. A tramp can
earn his supper by singing Home, Sweet Home.
The slavery of man to man is the very opposite of this.
It is hateful to the body and to the spirit. Our poets do not
praise it: they proclaim that no man is good enough to be
another man’s master. The latest of the great Jewish
prophets, a gentleman named Marx, spent his life in
proving that there is no extremity of selfish cruelty at which
the slavery of man to man will stop if it be not stopped by
law. You can see for yourself that it produces a state of
continual civil war—called the class war—between the
slaves and their masters, organised as Trade Unions on
one side and Employers’ Federations on the other. Saint
Thomas More, who has just been canonized, held that we
shall never have a peaceful and stable society until this
struggle is ended by the abolition of slavery altogether,
and the compulsion of everyone to do his share of the
world’s work with his own hands and brains, and not to
attempt to put it on anyone else.
Naturally the master class, through its parliaments
and schools and newspapers, makes the most desperate
efforts to prevent us from realising our slavery. From our
earliest years we are taught that our country is the land of
the free, and that our freedom was won for us by our
forefathers when they made King John sign Magna Charta
(also spelt Carta)—when they defeated the Spanish
Armada—when they cut off King Charles’s head—when they
made King William accept the Bill of Rights—when they
issued and made good the American Declaration of
Independence—when they won the battles of Waterloo and
2024-25
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118/KALEIDOSCOPE
Non-fiction
INTRODUCTION
Non-fiction is virtually everything that we read as
literature but that does not come under the
categories of novel, short story, play or poem. Non-
fiction, then, is writing that is factually true. It
can include articles, editorials, reports, critical
essays and interviews, humorous sketches,
biographies and autobiographies, lectures,
speeches and sermons.
This section contains six non-fiction pieces, three
by established writers of the canon: George
Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf and D.H.Lawrence;
one each by Ingmar Bergman, Amartya Sen and
Isaac Asimov.
The themes are: freedom, stream of consciousness,
importance of the novel as a creative form, the
details that make film-making a creative art and
the argumentative tradition in Indian culture
based on the famous dialogue between Krishna
and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Asimov’s piece
talks of the universe of science fiction, correlating
it to accounts of mythical superhuman beings in
the pre-scientific universe which served to fulfil
the same emotional needs as science fiction does.
The purpose of such writing is to explain, analyse,
define or clarify something—to provide us with
information and to show the how and why of
things.
2024-25
119/FREEDOM
Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom Freedom
George Bernard Shaw was a dramatist and critic.
His work as a London newspaper critic of music
and drama resulted in The Quintessence of
Ibsenism. His famous plays include Arms and
the Man, Candida and Man and Superman.
His works present a fearless intellectual criticism,
sugar-coated by a pretended lightness of tone. He
rebelled against muddled thinking, and sought to
puncture hollow pretensions.
What is a perfectly free person? Evidently a person who
can do what he likes, when he likes, and where he likes,
or do nothing at all if he prefers it. Well, there is no such
person, and there never can be any such person. Whether
we like it or not, we must all sleep for one third of our
lifetime—wash and dress and undress—we must spend a
couple of hours eating and drinking—we must spend nearly
as much in getting about from place to place. For half the
day we are slaves to necessities which we cannot shirk,
whether we are monarchs with a thousand slaves or humble
labourers with no servants but their wives. And the wives
must undertake the additional heavy slavery of child-
bearing, if the world is still to be peopled.
These natural jobs cannot be shirked. But they involve
other jobs which can. As we must eat we must first provide
food; as we must sleep, we must have beds, and bedding
in houses with fireplaces and coals; as we must walk
through the streets, we must have clothes to cover our
nakedness. Now, food and houses and clothes can be
1 1
1 1 1
G.B. Shaw
1856-1950
2024-25
120/KALEIDOSCOPE
produced by human labour. But when they are produced
they can be stolen. If you like honey you can let the bees
produce it by their labour, and then steal it from them. If
you are too lazy to get about from place to place on your
own legs you can make a slave of a horse. And what you do
to a horse or a bee, you can also do to a man or woman or
a child, if you can get the upper hand of them by force or
fraud or trickery of any sort, or even by teaching them
that it is their religious duty to sacrifice their freedom to
yours.
So beware! If you allow any person, or class of persons,
to get the upper hand of you, he will shift all that part of
his slavery to Nature that can be shifted on to your
shoulders; and you will find yourself working from eight to
fourteen hours a day when, if you had only yourself and
your family to provide for, you could do it quite comfortably
in half the time or less. The object of all honest governments
should be to prevent your being imposed on in this way.
But the object of most actual governments, I regret to say,
is exactly the opposite. They enforce your slavery and call
it freedom. But they also regulate your slavery, keeping
the greed of your masters within certain bounds. When
chattel slavery of the negro sort costs more than wage
slavery, they abolish chattel slavery and make you free to
choose between one employment or one master and another
and this they call a glorious triumph for freedom, though
for you it is merely the key of the street. When you complain,
they promise that in future you shall govern the country
for yourself. They redeem this promise by giving you a vote,
and having a general election every five years or so.
At the election two of their rich friends ask for your
vote and you are free to choose which of them you will vote for
to spite the other—a choice which leaves you no freer than
you were before, as it does not reduce your hours of labour by
a single minute. But the newspapers assure you that your
vote has decided the election, and that this constitutes you a
free citizen in a democratic country. The amazing thing about
it is that you are fool enough to believe them.
Now mark another big difference between the natural
slavery of man to Nature and the unnatural slavery of
2024-25
121/FREEDOM
man to man. Nature is kind to her slaves. If she forces you
to eat and drink, she makes eating and drinking so pleasant
that when we can afford it we eat and drink too much. We
must sleep or go mad: but then sleep is so pleasant that
we have great difficulty in getting up in the morning. And
firesides and families seem so pleasant to the young that
they get married and join building societies to realise their
dreams. Thus, instead of resenting our natural wants as
slavery, we take the greatest pleasure in their satisfaction.
We write sentimental songs in praise of them. A tramp can
earn his supper by singing Home, Sweet Home.
The slavery of man to man is the very opposite of this.
It is hateful to the body and to the spirit. Our poets do not
praise it: they proclaim that no man is good enough to be
another man’s master. The latest of the great Jewish
prophets, a gentleman named Marx, spent his life in
proving that there is no extremity of selfish cruelty at which
the slavery of man to man will stop if it be not stopped by
law. You can see for yourself that it produces a state of
continual civil war—called the class war—between the
slaves and their masters, organised as Trade Unions on
one side and Employers’ Federations on the other. Saint
Thomas More, who has just been canonized, held that we
shall never have a peaceful and stable society until this
struggle is ended by the abolition of slavery altogether,
and the compulsion of everyone to do his share of the
world’s work with his own hands and brains, and not to
attempt to put it on anyone else.
Naturally the master class, through its parliaments
and schools and newspapers, makes the most desperate
efforts to prevent us from realising our slavery. From our
earliest years we are taught that our country is the land of
the free, and that our freedom was won for us by our
forefathers when they made King John sign Magna Charta
(also spelt Carta)—when they defeated the Spanish
Armada—when they cut off King Charles’s head—when they
made King William accept the Bill of Rights—when they
issued and made good the American Declaration of
Independence—when they won the battles of Waterloo and
2024-25
122/KALEIDOSCOPE
Trafalgar on the playing-fields of Eton—and when, only
the other day, they quite unintentionally changed the
German, Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires into
republics.
When we grumble, we are told that all our miseries
are our own doing because we have the vote. When we say
‘What good is the vote?’ we are told that we have the Factory
Acts, and the Wages Boards, and free education, and the
New Deal, and the dole; and what more could any
reasonable man ask for? We are reminded that the rich
are taxed a quarter—a third—or even a half and more of
their incomes; but the poor are never reminded that they
have to pay that much of their wages as rent in addition to
having to work twice as long every day as they would need
if they were free.
Whenever famous writers protest against this
imposture—say Voltaire and Rousseau and Tom Paine
in the eighteenth century, or Cobbett and Shelley, Karl
Marx and Lassalle in the nineteenth, or Lenin and
Trotsky in the twentieth—you are taught that they are
atheists and libertines, murderers and scoundrels, and
often it is made a criminal offence to buy or sell their
books. If their disciples make a revolution, England
immediately makes war on them and lends money to the
other Powers to join her in forcing the revolutionists
restore the slave order. When this combination was
successful at Waterloo, the victory was advertised as
another triumph for British freedom; and the British
wage-slaves, instead of going into mourning like Lord
Byron, believed it all and cheered enthusiastically. When
the revolution wins, as it did in Russia in 1922, the
fighting stops; but the abuse, the calumnies, the lies
continue until the revolutionised State grows into a first-
rate military power. Then our diplomatists, after having
for years denounced the revolutionary leaders as the
most abominable villains and tyrants, have to do a right
turn and invite them to dinner.
2024-25