Evangelist of Utopia
S. Raghunath

APTLY called the "incorrigible" Utopist, H.G. Wells came of a poor family — his father a professional cricketer and an unsuccessful shopkeeper and his mother a lady’s maid.

A sense of social and economic injustice and inequality was instilled in him early in life and, moreover, there was something called "progress" and progress in Victorian England meant scientific progress.

At the feet of Sir Thomas Huxley, this imaginative youngster caught a vision of science that was never to be dimmed.

He earned his Bachelor of Science degree and taught science on a miserable salary until Fleet Street opened its doors to him.

The idea of Utopia — a place where all is well — originated with Sir Thomas. More in the 15th century and as its evangelist, Wells untiringly preached the application of science and scientific methods to the government. If Wells was not a professional scientist, he was at least a lucid interpreter and an apostle of social change brought about my science.

What would be the nature of government and society under science and could such a change be intelligently controlled and directed? Convinced that both these questions could be answered affirmatively, Wells cast about for a formula. The Fabians, of whom he was one for many years, thought wonky in terms of their limited concepts of economics and ideology. He was alive to the incompatibility of parliamentary methods of government and the potentialities of science.

So, at the outset, Wells declared that only a world state, scientifically planned, would meet the requirements of society. He predicted disaster if his ideas were not accepted. There were only two choices, he declared. The first one was an "orderly way of living for the human species" and the other was "misery, war, violence, hunger, destruction and annihilation of mankind." Like all evangelists, he overlooked the tremendous vitality and inner strength of parliamentary and democratic institutions, folk cultures, religious faith and feudal loyalty to traditional institutions. The Wellisian steamroller was to flatten out all these.

As it happens in the case of every visionary who dares to challenge the established ideas and ideologies of the time, it has been the practice in recent years in western literary circles to dismiss Wells as an "outmoded" and "renegade" Fabian. It is quite possible that his ideas and proposals have far more vitality and resilience than his detractors think. Thomas More’s Utopia and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, among others, were not utterly futile performances. They are still read, discussed and studied. However, all these Utopian works are based upon the fallcious presumption that if war, hunger, misery, violence and ignorance were to be abolished, mankind would be content to lead a life of drudgery and monotony.

Wells, in his lifetime, was accused of vagueness, but if ever a Utopian suggested practical specifications and how his Utopian ideas could be implemented, it was he. In fact, the subtitle to his classic The Open Conspiracy reads: "Blueprint for a World Revolution." Better than Karl Marx did he realise the importance of universal education and that his world revolution could never be fomented until the public mind was prepared for it. Wells was very definite in his ideas and how they could be put to practical use. It was for this educational purpose that he wrote Outlines of World History (of which more than 20 million copies have been sold worldwide), his Science of Life and his Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind.

With the advent of atomic energy, new issues have arisen which must be addressed squarely if the disaster predicted by Wellis is to be averted. So, we find nuclear scientists and physicists advocating a world state. What they are saying now was said more dramatically, forcefully and lucidly by Wellis more than a century ago in "The World Set Free" and The Shape of Things to Come.

The world need not swallow in the whole the ideas set down in The Open Conspiracy and other Wellisian novels, but it requires a new guidance, a new direction to address contemporary political, social and economic problems which cannot be solved by the methods of the past.

Owing to the threat of mass annihilation by atomic weapons that hangs over mankind and for this reason alone, Wells deserves to be read and re-read as a prophet of a world state scientifically and democratically planned.

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