George Orwell’s Reflections on Gandhi : Summary and Analysis

Abhijeet Pratap

  • March 12, 2018

Orwell’s Reflections on Gandhi is one of his most important essays probing the popular saint’s personality, perspective and works from various angles. The author has tried his best to be impartial on Gandhi since even his adversaries were unable to remain uninfluenced by him.  The question that whether Gandhi was a saint, a politician or both has haunted scholars. Answering it definitively would require a vast amount of research and reasoning. One notable fact about Gandhi’s life was abstinence and George Orwell highlights it in his essay at various stages in order to answer questions on Mahatma’s character. Orwell has also reflected upon Gandhi and his teachings and techniques in the context of the atomic war which was one of the darkest questions requiring answer following the dropping of the atom bomb.  The author also judges the appeal of Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence and if it had a universal appeal and could be practiced worldwide.

One great fact about Orwell’s essay is that you will find a stunningly clear picture of Gandhi in it – a picture that  looks vastly different from the one media or the other sources paint. Orwell has analysed Mahatma’s personality with great care and still he himself does not look satisfied. Orwell was an investigator who would probe any topic till he reached the right conclusion. Despite having drawn from second hand resources mainly, he has painted a large and clear picture of Mahatma. If any ordinary author tries to weigh and evaluate Mahatma Gandhi’s personae, it would take him a lot of reasoning with his own conscience. Gandhi had the power to bend others’ will in his favour. Orwell assesses Gandhi’s character and soul in his own honest manner.

Gandhi’s attitude and appearance could give rise to some distaste as Orwell openly accepts in his essay. His actions and thoughts have not escaped criticism either and were considered anti-human and reactionary by many.  However, while there were several things impractical about Gandhi and still an impartial evaluation shows his ideals and ideology as a potent tool against violence and mass destruction. Orwell successfully highlights the strengths of Gandhi’s philosophy and how one simple man and his simple philosophy had the potential to change the world. However, at an inner level, Gandhi was not as simple as he looked. His personality was complex  because of the mixed traits, the existence of which in the same person is unimaginable for most of us. Many of us trying to understand Gandhi’s personae would not be able to see beyond the first few layers. His stubbornness and courage are some important traits that can not be overlooked. Without putting things in the right context, one cannot have a clear picture of Gandhi. Orwell is not trying to defend Gandhi or his character in his essay. Instead he is trying to present a clearer picture that helps you see past the Mahatma’s personality and outer appearance. For most people, it was impossible to peep into Gandhi’s soul. The aura of simplicity around Gandhi was tough as a turtle’s shell.

Orwell’s approach to understanding Gandhi is more candid than others. He starts his essay by asking questions about Gandhi’s sainthood and the extent to which he was a saint or a politician. He asks if Gandhi was moved by vanity and if his ability to shake empires by sheer spiritual power had corrupted his conscience. If he was a saint, then to what extent did politics corrupt him or did he compromise his principles by entering politics. A definite answer to these questions is impossible without having studied the saint’s life in detail and without considering every large and small act in his life which was a pilgrimage in itself.  Orwell had studied his autobiography which was only partial because it continues only into the 1920s and still provides some strong evidence into those parts of his life which prove that he was a shrewd man who would have become a successful lawyer, administrator, or business man but chose otherwise, shunning all the worldly pleasures and wealth.

Orwell raises such questions right at the outset because he cannot agree with the normal picture of the Mahatma presented to the world but subjects the ordinary photograph drawn by media to his own litmus test. One important strength of the Gandhian philosophy that comes to light from Orwell’s discussion is that rejecting a few small things is essential to reach the bigger things in his life. Slavery is for those who are weakened by their personal biases and when your personal bias stops weakening you, you find strength against the biggest monster that can dominate you – your ego. Gandhi’s personality is complex and to see under its layers impossible. This complexity can hinder judgement and one may end up being over-influenced or unclear in his view of the Mahatma. The personality that looked simple and frictionless could exert pressure that even Hitler did not.

While Gandhi in person did not make a great impression on Orwell, his autobiography did, whose first few pages he got to read in a low quality Indian newspaper. The things that were most commonly associated with Gandhi like home-spun cloth, ‘soul forces’ and vegetarianism did not hold any special appeal in the eyes of the Western masses. The British believed they were using him as he had the ability to prevent violence. In private, the English would admit that he was a man with real influence. However, as his nonviolent methods grew more targeted at the British, it had left the conservatives angry.

Orwell had noted that even the officials that talked of him with amusement and disapproval had developed a genuine liking for him later. Such was the influence of the Mahatma that it was difficult to hate him for long. No one could find vulgarity or malice in him or fear or even cowardice. However, when you are judging a person like Gandhi you instinctively apply the very highest standards as you apply in case of saints. This can make people ignore some of his most important and finest virtues.  Orwell highlights his courage as an example. It was one of the most neglected of his virtues. Any man of stature in politics who valued his life would have hundreds of guards surround him. Gandhi was not well guarded at the time he was murdered. It proved either he did not fear death by an enemy or did not suspect having one. His simplicity kept other things about him hidden.

He was free from other vices too like he did not have that suspicion of a  maniac which most orientals can be accused of and which Forster highlighted in his ‘A Passage to India’. Neither was he a hypocrite like the British. While he was quite shrewd at detecting dishonesty, he never tried to press his personal values upon others and could connect with their better side easily. Moreover, he was not afflicted by envy or inferiority despite being from a poor family or lacking physical appeal. He was surprised by racism when he first saw it in South Africa in its worst form. Orwell highlights his virtues and his innocence because these virtues cannot be found in a person without innocence. While fighting against racism in South Africa, he never thought of people based on their color or race. To him, everyone from governor of a province to a cotton millionaire, a half-starved Dravidian coolie or a British private soldier were all similar.  For such a person, it was difficult to be without friends and even when he was unpopular for fighting for Indians, he had some European friends.

Orwell explains how the Mahatma’s career went through stages before he started being known as the saint. His autobiography despite not being a literary masterpiece was impressive. It showed that while Gandhi might have been more content in some other field, he was forced to join politics and adopt his extremist opinions in stages and at times unwillingly. Gandhi did not happen by chance or by accident. He himself did not draw the path he followed. His character was shaped by circumstances and created through demand. He even made attempts to adopt a Westernized lifestyle as Orwell notes from Gandhi’s autobiography. “ He wore a top hat, took dancing lessons, studied French and Latin, went up the Eiffel Tower and even tried to learn the violin ” (Source : Orwellfoundation). He was not a saint since childhood as usually happens in the case of most. Neither was he of the type that shun sensational debaucheries after once having drowned themselves in them. While Gandhi has confessed in his autobiography he did not have many sins to hide, there are really too few to confess. All his worldly possessions he had at the time of his death did not cost any more than Five Pounds. The same can be said about his sins or what he gladly accepts as mistakes in his autobiography. If they were to be heaped together, they would weigh less than those committed by a ten years old kid. His sins could be counted on fingers.

Apart from a few cigarettes, consumption of meat once or twice and a few annas stolen and two fruitless visits to a brothel, he had hardly committed any worldly sins. This is not possible without personal character. Hardly ever did he lose his temper or judgment except one or two times. Orwell does not miss to highlight the highest degree of self control which Mahatma demonstrated and which could otherwise be found only in Buddhist monks. Since his childhood, he possessed a strong sense of ethics, even stronger than religion but remained directionless till he turned thirty. So, his first entry into something that could really be called life of public activity was made by way of vegetarianism. His ancestors were solid middle class businessmen and in his personality those strengths could be felt clearly. So, for the sake of social service, he abandoned his ambitions but even then remained as Orwell notes “ resourceful, energetic lawyer and a hard-headed political organizer, careful in keeping down expenses, an adroit handler of committees and an indefatigable chaser of subscriptions ” (Source: Orwellfoundation).

Exploring so many facets of Gandhi’s personality is not possible without feeling confused but Orwell has given an impartial touch to his analysis. He touches on Gandhi from several angles and while he is mostly appreciating Gandhi’s contributions he also explains what different people or groups have felt about him. He tries to reach the core of the topic that what made Mahatma a Mahatma (a saint) – as he was later called in his life. However, his teachings are based on his religious beliefs and so whether they can be accepted by everyone is not certain. Several people had also felt Gandhi to be touched by Orthodoxy. Despite those mixed traits in his character, there was hardly one that could be called sinful and for that even his worst critics have admitted him to be a wonderful man whose life was a gift to this world. While Orwell’s analysis is the most penetrating of all, it is so because he touches more on the real side of the Mahatma than the more glamorous side publicised by media. For many, Gandhi was like an enlightened monk but Orwell portrays him more as  a real person who wrestled India away from the British by virtue of his simplicity.

Gandhi’s teachings cannot be approached in the same manner as every piece of knowledge. They must be interpreted in the right context otherwise a tendency had grown to talk of him as if he were an integral part of the western left-wing movement. His opposition to state violence and centralism has made anarchists and pacifists claim him for their own herd. Orwell notes there is also an alien like and anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines that the anarchists and pacifists might have ignored. Gandhi’s teachings can mainly be interpreted in the Hindu context where only God is the truth and the material world an illusion.  To see it in a different context can lead people to varying conclusions. 

Apart from shunning all kind of animal food, he shunned alcohol, tobacco and spices. Sex was not a sin but must be practiced within restrictions and for the purpose of bearing kids only. In his mid thirties, Gandhi took oath of complete Brahmacharya that does not just mean complete chastity but also elimination of sexual desire. For an average man such high level of discipline must be very difficult to practice. He did not take milk either since it would arouse sexual desire. After it, the most important point – the person pursuing goodness must lose the personal and be impersonal. While trying to reflect on Gandhian perspective, Orwell also compares it with the common-sensical. Several of his actions and views do not look like based upon common sense and still he handled some of the most difficult questions in politics with skill and responsibility. It is why Orwell refers to the presence of a shrewd man inside Gandhi who was not a genius like Einstein but still had strong foresight. His shrewdness was also justified in the light of the problems he fought against.

There are no close friendships or exclusive loves. The way you like ‘A’ is the way you like ‘B’. He found close friendships dangerous and misleading because the personal bias born of it could lead you into moral wrongdoing. Orwell also finds it true because to love God or the humanity in its entirety, one must not give any one person a particular preference. To cultivate a bias for someone is not like loving him. However, to an average person it would mean being inconsiderate. You love your family means you love them more than others. This is where the humanistic and the religious do not match. His autobiography does not talk much about how he treated his kids and wife but gives a certain account where he was not ready to administer them animal food and instead was willing to let them die.  Any average man would consider it inhuman and would find it impractical because letting your kid die for want of animal food when he is ill is not less than cruelty. While such sacrifice on Gandhi’s part may look noble, for an average man it is inhuman.

Orwell while trying to evaluate Gandhian values in the light of their relevance for average human, sheds light on why they must not  be adopted by a common man. The essence of humanity is not perfectionism and one must not chase asceticism to an extent making friendly communication impossible. Detachment or non attachment is most often seen as a method to deliver oneself from worldly pain. This is where humanistic and religious ideal seem incompatible. Detachment or non attachment cannot become every human being’s reason who has to find reason in his worldly connections. Moreover detachment also means shunning responsibilities. While most people do not have a genuine desire to be saints, those who possess such desire are not much tempted to be common humans. The difference is similar to that between drama and reality. However, Orwell is not trying to ridicule Gandhi because if Gandhian lifestyle became everyone’s lifestyle, the originality and genuineness related with Gandhi’s personality will fail. He is trying to clarify the logic behind Gandhi’s perspective and if there was anything ridiculous behind it.

To sketch a complete picture of Gandhi is a difficult task but Orwell does try it and for it he studied many facets of Gandhi’s lifestyle, ideals, personal values and teachings. One cannot talk of him without mentioning Satyagraha which as per Orwell was a method of nonviolent warfare that was used to defeat the enemy without kindling any kind of fear, hatred or need for retaliation. It includes the use of tactics like civil disobedience, strikes, and similar more without being aggressive. However, Gandhi objected to passive resistance being understood as Satyagraha. Satyagraha is active resistance and active protests against oppression and evil – it denotes a firm stance in the favour of truth. Gandhi even served as a stretcher bearer in the Boer war and was ready to serve again in the World War I.

Even after having accepted nonviolence completely he believed that war had logic and you had to choose your side during a war. In this regard, he did not abstain from accepting the logic and did not pretend that you could be neutral in war and that both sides were exactly the same and which one won did not really matter. Gandhi remained honest even while answering such difficult and awkward questions. While the Western Pacifists evaded questions related to Jewish extermination, Gandhi answered that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which will rouse the world to Hitler’s violence. This answer could have shaken people as was Mr Fischer. The later events justified his response and Jews died in large numbers. While urging a non violent resistance against Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might lead to several million deaths.

Orwell questions the strength of Gandhian beliefs and if the person was able to think beyond his own struggle and if he even understood totalitarianism. He was able to generate publicity and arouse the world when right to free assembly and free press were limited by the government. There was no Gandhi in Russia and Russians could implement such movements only when the idea occurred to all of them. In Orwell’s view applying non violence to international politics was difficult and it was proved by the conflicting statements that Gandhi gave about the world war. The nature of pacifism changes when applied to international politics. Moreover the assumption that people have a better side and can be approached generously was not true in all contexts. If you were dealing with lunatics you will not necessarily find them approachable.

Gandhi might have been unaware of several facts but never felt afraid of answering a question and always handled them honestly. The Second World War had happened and the globe was on the brink of another. This had left George Orwell concerned that it would not be able to bear the effects of another world war. He could not see another way out of it than world-wide adoption of non violence. When Gandhi died, India was engaged in a bitter civil war. No one would have predicted the event till one year before the British fled India. It happened at the hands of a labor government and had Churchill been in control, things might have taken a different turn. However, by the time Gandhi died he had attained his biggest dream of India’s liberation from the British rule. Orwell asks a few questions before the conclusion. Was it Gandhi’s influence that so much support had gathered in favour of India by 1945? Had Gandhi been able to decontaminate the political environment with his non violent struggle? If such questions are raised about Gandhi, it is not difficult to imagine his mammoth stature. Questions can be raised about his sainthood and one can deny his ideals or feel a strong distaste for him but compare him to the other political figures of his time and his mere existence was a blessing for this world. Gandhi remained a misunderstood or less understood mystery and perhaps this was the reason that rather than being rewarded for his sacrifices and leadership, he was murdered brutally by a Hindu fanatic. However, even in his death he remained a picture of outstanding physical courage.

Orwell’s work illustrates Mahatma’s personality in detail. To avoid being partial, Orwell does not base it on first hand meetings or interviews and instead proposes to bring to light what can be uncovered only through reasoning. He peels the cover off Mahatma’s personality like an orange to show the pulpier side of him. He shows there is no stink underneath and Mahatma has preserved his soul from degeneration through sheer spiritual power and faith in basic principles like truth and non-violence. In politics, this will be seen as a great sacrifice and not as mere leadership.

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Gandhi’s towering moral reputation tends to blind us today to the role he played in the minds of is contemporaries in the British Empire -- that of a political activist.

This raised issues Orwell grappled with in this penetrating examination of Gandhi’s career , published in the Partisan Review in January 1949, a year after Gandhi’s assassination.

Orwell struggles to balance his natural skepticism of those held up as saints (“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent”) with his admiration for Gandhi the man, leavening it all with recognition that Gandhi’s principles and activities sometimes served the interests of his adversaries.

The British governors of India made use of Gandhi, he wrote, “or thought they were making use of him.... Since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence — which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever -- he could be regarded as ‘our man.’ ...The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away.”

One finds here some of Orwell’s most fascinating musings on political action in all its forms, especially nonviolence. Orwell is often portrayed as a critic of Gandhi, and there certainly is criticism in this essay, but the author’s ultimate judgment is the one that should stay with us, even more so for being pronounced at a time when memories of Gandhi the man and the politician were still very much alive:

“His character was an extraordinarily mixed one, but there was almost nothing in it that you can put your finger on and call bad, and I believe that even Gandhi’s worst enemies would admit that he was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive.”

Reach me at @hiltzikm on Twitter , Facebook , Google+ or by email .

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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik has written for the Los Angeles Times for more than 40 years. His business column appears in print every Sunday and Wednesday, and occasionally on other days. Hiltzik and colleague Chuck Philips shared the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for articles exposing corruption in the entertainment industry. His seventh book, “Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America,” was published in 2020. His forthcoming book, “The Golden State,” is a history of California. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/hiltzikm and on Facebook at facebook.com/hiltzik.

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Readiscovery

What I've read and discovered

Orwell: Why I Write, BBC and Reflections on Gandhi

George Orwell

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Anyone who likes to write will probably agree with some of the things George Orwell (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950) has to say on why we write. In his essay, Why I Write, which appeared in 1946, four years before he died at the age of 46, Orwell wrote:

Four motives for writing

I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer… They are: (i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all–and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money. (ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations. (iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity. (iv) Political purpose. Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Right in the main, but…

One doesn’t have to agree with everything Orwell says. Not every writer writes with a political purpose.

But, yes, to write, one has to love words, their sounds and rhythms, the emotions they convey. One has to be observant to describe anything in words – and, yes, one may write to impress, to seem clever, to be talked about.

Different world

So, much of what Orwell says is true. But the world has changed since his time. Contrary to what he says, we don’t lose our sense of being individuals after 30. Not these days when we have Facebook and other social networks where we can post our thoughts and pictures. We wouldn’t be doing that if we thought we had nothing interesting to share and had lost our sense of individuality. This is something he didn’t anticipate – the rise of social media.

Orwell begins his essay, Why I Write, with the words: ”From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.”

“I was the middle child of three but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely,” he writes. “I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons…”

I guess this is how many people become writers.

Orwell recalls: ”When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words.”

Spanish Civil War

Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days, was published in 1934. Then came the Spanish Civil War (1936 -1939). Orwell went to Spain in December 1936, fought for the republicans against the fascists, was wounded in the war and returned to England in July 1937.

The Spanish Civil War had a profound influence on him as a writer. “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it,” he says In Why I Write.

Orwell’s starting point

“What I have most wanted to do,” he says, “is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. … So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

Orwell ends his essay, asserting: “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane…”

In his last sentence, he says: “Looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”

I like to read Orwell’s essays more than his novels. Some of his essays such as Politics and the English Language, A Nice Cup of Tea and Decline of the English Murder are widely quoted, anthologized and considered classics.

I dipped into his essays after his statue was unveiled outside Broadcasting House in London two days ago. “George Orwell returns to loom over BBC”, said the Guardian. I saw the news on BBC World.

George Orwell, back at the Beeb pic.twitter.com/VNLZxLsStp — Maev Kennedy (@maevesther) November 7, 2017

Orwell joined the BBC in August 1941, becoming a talks producer at the Overseas Eastern Service. He left in November 1943, going on to publish Animal Farm in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty-four in 1949.

Initially, at the BBC, a lot of Orwell’s time was spent writing a weekly news commentary aimed primarily at India, to be read on air by Indian members of the department. The typescripts were rediscovered and published in the 1980s. They are summaries of how the Second World War was going.

“After about a year, those in charge seem to have decided that because Orwell was a known supporter of Indian independence it would go down well in India if his name became more associated with the broadcasts,” the BBC reported after his statue was unveiled.

“He invited the likes of TS Eliot and EM Forster to broadcast to Asia and was permitted to go on air himself,” the report added.

Reflections on Gandhi

Orwell, who was born in India, in a place called Motihari in Bihar, had mixed feelings about Gandhi. In his essay, Reflections on Gandhi, in 1949, he wrote:

“The things that one associated with him – home-spun cloth, ‘soul forces’ and vegetarianism – were unappealing, and his medievalist programme was obviously not viable in a backward, starving, over-populated country. It was also apparent that the British were making use of him, or thought they were making use of him. Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence–which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever–he could be regarded as “our man”. In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away.”

He ended the essay, saying:

“One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi’s basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!”

It is grudging praise, but Orwell does acknowledge Gandhi was the cleanest politician of his time.

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Orwell and Gandhi

A reader writes:

I think you and Hitchens are both overly enamored of the provocative opening line of Orwell's "Reflections on Gandhi," which reads: "Saints should always be judged guilty until proven innocent..."

Go back and read the entire essay, which I treasure. To say, in the end, that Orwell dismissed Gandhi's "pacifism" as "idiotic" is simply wrong.

Written on the occasion of Gandhi's murder, it is the intersection of two of the towering figures of decency of the 20th century. Their mutual intellectual honesty always cheers me up.

For one, Orwell clearly acknowledges Gandhi himself utterly rejected the concept of "pacifism" and advocated something much closer to aggressive "non-violent warfare."

And in response to your dissent of the day, let me quote Orwell himself from the actual essay:

"At the same time, there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity...It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment (1949)? And if there is, what is he accomplishing?"

60 years on, what were the answers to those questions? It's not just a question of publicity. It's a matter of engaging over time the individual consciences of the human beings who must always be the instruments of power. Without question, that takes time and sacrifice and absorption of defeat. But do you think the unspeakable bravery of the  monks in Burma have had no effect? There will be a next time and a next. And there will be more death. But one day, faced with the pressure of their own corruption and doubt, the instruments of power won't function if the mirror itself doesn't crack.

Orwell writes: "One should, I think, realize that Gandhi"s teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things.."

The immediate pleasure of experiencing social and political freedom or in seeing someone like Saddam get what's coming to him fall squarely within those things man measures. Gandhi was most concerned that men not live as slaves to their fear or anger or impatience. In that sense, he was deeply, classicly conservative. He knew that culture would change government given enough time. He knew that men can't control events, but they can control themselves.

Most of us don't want to believe that. We don't want to wait and suffer. We want to see and enjoy what we've done. Violence is faster. It's the easiest way to feel the fruits of our wills. It's also the only way to make monsters suffer, which, is a petty and meaningless impulse if we think, as Gandhi did, of any individual lifetime on earth as a passing moment in relation to eternity.

Finally, in assessing Orwell's opinion of Gandhi and his philosophy, consider this line from the same essay: "It seems doubtful whether civilization can survive another major war, and it is at least thinkable that the way out lies through non-violence. It is Gandhi's virtue that he would have been ready to give honest consideration to the kind of question that I have raised."

Not sure I can think of greater Orwellian compliment.

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George Orwell, Ghandi, and the British Empire

The Mahatma and the Policeman: how did George Orwell view Gandhi?

Orwell & Empire

Orwell and Empire

  • By Douglas Kerr
  • October 24 th 2022

In the mid-1920s, in Burma, a young officer of the Imperial Police was reading in an Indian newspaper an instalment of the autobiography of the most famous man in India. Years later, he remembered the moment and his mixed feelings:

At about the time when the autobiography first appeared I remember reading its opening chapters in the ill-printed pages of some Indian newspaper. They made a good impression on me, which Gandhi himself, at that time, did not.

It is no surprise that Gandhi himself was not popular with British officials in the Raj. He, and the Congress Party with which he was associated, had for years been a thorn in the side of the imperial authorities, and were in the vanguard of the movement to force the British to quit India. In British Burma, nationalists looked to India for inspiration and sometimes support in their own struggle. Every imperial policeman in Burma was aware of Gandhi as the figurehead of this rebellious spirit, as well as a wily political operator who kept finding new ways to get under the skin of the government of British India and its disciplinary forces. If Gandhi did not make a good impression on the young policeman, whose name was Eric Blair, that hostile perception was maintained, for the most part, throughout the subsequent career of George Orwell, the writer he became. Yet on the face of it, this was surprising. 

Gandhi and Orwell were implacable enemies of the injustice of imperial rule and worked to change the minds of those who sustained it. This campaign came to a climax with the end of British rule in India in 1947, which both lived to see. So what was it that prevented Orwell from seeing in Gandhi a kind of ally, a comrade in arms, even a hero? Through his career, in which he wrote a good deal about Gandhi, he expresses suspicion, hostility, irritation, “a sort of aesthetic distaste,” and at best a grudging respect for the older man. Why?

The socialist anti-imperialist George Orwell did not cease (though he tried) to be an Anglo-Indian in many of his instincts and responses. Particularly when war came in 1939, he rediscovered in himself what he called “the spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues.” Later, in 1942, when Britain and its empire were beleaguered, with victorious Japanese forces sweeping through Burma to the gates of India, he was exasperated that Gandhi and his allies would not co-operate in the defence of the country, instead demanding that the British quit India without delay. Orwell believed this would be tantamount to handing India over to the Emperor of Japan. The British immediately locked up Gandhi and the Congress leaders, setting back by several years the possibility of co-operation over India’s future. 

Orwell also thought that, in the 1940s, a pacifism like Gandhi’s was culpably naïve. Civil disobedience was all very well against the British in India, “an old-fashioned and rather shaky despotism,” but would be a hopeless tactic against a ruthless dictator. What action would Gandhi have recommended for the European Jews? The answer was on the record. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” This, in Gandhi’s view, would have aroused the world to the evils of Hitler’s violence.

Orwell said he remembered that, during his time in the Indian police, many Englishmen thought Gandhi was actually useful to the Raj. His advocacy of non-violence, they argued, always worked against translating anti-British resistance into any effective action, and meanwhile he “alienated the British public by his extremism and aided the British Government by his moderation.” Besides, Orwell found his religious views suspect, and in the end coercive. Gandhi was like Tolstoy, he grumbled, a utopianist whose basic aims were anti-human and reactionary.

Yet at the end of the day, he had to admit Gandhi was more responsible than anyone else for bringing about the end of British rule in India, the first and crucial step in the relatively peaceful dismantling of the empire. Orwell the anti-imperialist had desired this above all, and knew it could only be brought about by the action of imperial subjects, while Orwell the Anglo-Indian had never quite believed that the subject peoples themselves could ever make it happen. Even after the death of the Mahatma in 1948, Orwell couldn’t really make up his mind. In his last essay on Gandhi, written just a year before his own death in January 1950, he was still confessing that Gandhi inspired in him “a sort of aesthetic distaste”—and yet, “compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!”

Douglas Kerr is Honorary Professor of English at University of Hong Kong and Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London.

His first book was about the war poet Wilfred Owen and much of his later work studies English literature about the East in colonial and postcolonial times. His most recent book is  Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession, and Practice (OUP, 2013) and he is general editor of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Conan Doyle.

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Recent Comments

The last comment reminds me of a lovely book on Orwell by John Sutherland, Orwell’s Nose. Orwell could perhaps not overcome an instinctive dislike of Gandhi.

It’s worth remembering that until 1937 Burma was a province of British india, so Burmese nationalists and British officials probably regarded Gandhi as a direst exemplar.

Whoops! I mean “Burmese nationalists and British officials probably regarded Gandhi as a direct exemplar.”

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George Orwell’s Reflections on Gandhi

In his essay, Reflections on Gandhi, Orwell tries to examine Gandhi’s principle of Satyagraha and how he applied this principle during his political struggle against the British. Let’s take a closer look.

orwell gandhi essay

“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent,” says George Orwell in the opening lines of his essay Reflections on Gandhi . He wrote it a year after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi on 30 January, 1948.

In this essay, Orwell tries to examine Gandhi’s principle of Satyagraha (holding on to truth) and how he applied this principle during his political struggle against the British. Orwell goes on to explain Gandhi’s personality, and what role it played in his political ideology. Let’s take a closer look.

As clear from the opening lines, Orwell sees Gandhi as some kind of saint, or at least someone who is pretending to be one. Orwell is being too harsh, you could say; and you are probably right. Further, he confesses that Gandhi did not make a good impression on him, at least initially. The things that one associated with Gandhi – home-spun cloth, “soul forces” and vegetarianism – he found unappealing. He found Gandhi’s whole agenda medievalist in nature as it ignored the modern reality. But, perhaps his most surprising criticism of Gandhi was with regard to the latter’s role within the British colonial structure. “They (the British) were making use of him,” argued Orwell. “Since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence – which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever – he could be regarded as our man. ”

The above critique is scathing and – quite naturally – raises a lot of eyebrows. The essay, however, tries to evaluate Gandhi in the entirety of his works. Orwell admits that the British officials genuinely admired and liked him. That no one could ever suggest that Gandhi was corrupt, or had any malice in him. In fact, Orwell made a concession that no commentator today ever makes: that we should not judge Gandhi by those impossible high standards which instinctively come to mind because of his personality. Instead we must see him as he was; for his virtues and vices. When we do that, we find that he was a man of courage. And though he came of a poor middle-class family, started life rather unfavourably, and was probably of unimpressive physical appearance, he was not afflicted by envy or inferiority. He could approach everyone in the same way, which helped him make friends wherever he went. And all these people – including his worst enemies – would agree that Gandhi was an interesting and unusual man who enriched the world simply by being alive.

Orwell reflects on the personal and political life of Gandhi, and one can see it as some kind of clash of two value systems. Gandhi supported vegetarianism, Orwell did not; Gandhi preferred brahmacharya (celibacy), Orwell did not; after all, Gandhi was religious and Orwell was not. Because there are fundamental differences in two value systems, there arise a number of points of disagreement. What bothered Orwell the most, as it’s apparent from the essay, was Gandhi’s superstitious behaviour which often brought misery to him and people around him.

Gandhi’s pacifism has often been criticised by people – and so is the case in this essay. As mentioned earlier, Orwell saw him as a stretch-bearer on the British side on multiple occasions. He says, by pretending that in every war both sides are exactly the same and it makes no difference who wins, Gandhi made it hard for himself to be on the right side.

This appears problematic when you read Gandhi’s views on Auschwitz in Louis Fischer’s Gandhi and Stalin . According to Fischer, Gandhi’s view was that the German Jews ought to commit suicide, which “would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler’s violence.” After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. Clearly, this was nothing short of inhumane on Gandhi’s part. Similar accusations were made against him during Hindu-Muslim riots when he requested Hindus to practice non-violence, no matter what? – that fuelled a lot of anger and hatred, and perhaps was one of the causes behind his assassination. Orwell makes an interesting point that Gandhi’s non-violence as political tool could only work as long as the regimes were kind to him. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? he asks. And if there is, what is he accomplishing?

Despite all the virtues-vices, agreements-disagreements, and praises-criticisms, Orwell ends the essay on a much more positive note. He says: One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi’s aims were anti-human and reactionary; but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!

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The Failed Saint: On George Orwell’s India

By jason christian january 21, 2024.

The Failed Saint: On George Orwell’s India

For five years I had been part of an oppressive system, and it had left me with a bad conscience. Innumerable remembered faces—faces of prisoners in the dock, of men waiting in the condemned cells, of subordinates I had bullied and aged peasants I had snubbed, of servants and coolies I had hit with my fist in moments of rage (nearly everyone does these things in the East, at any rate occasionally: Orientals can be very provoking)—haunted me intolerably. I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive [...] and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone—one mind less, one world less.

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English notes latest questions, write summary of george orwell’s essay “reflections on gandhi”.

ganesh bhandari

George Orwell wrote a piece of writing called “Reflection on Gandhi.” He looks at Gandhi’s life in this essay. The essay is a look back on the life of Gandhi. Orwell tried to understand Gandhi by reading “My Experiments with Truth,” Gandhi’s autobiography. He liked the book, but Gandhi didn’t strike him as a very interesting person. He gave some reasons why he didn’t like Gandhi;

  • Gandhi thought that the mind had power.
  • Gandhi liked food for vegetarians.
  • Gandhi believed in Khadi, which means clothes made by hand.
  • Gandhi believed in old-fashioned economics based on villages, which doesn’t work for a large country like India.
  • Gandhi wasn’t perfect, but he was very smart.

Orwell, on the other hand, did not think Gandhi was a bad person. He says, “Even Gandhi’s worst enemy would agree that he is a strange and interesting person who made the world a better place just by being alive.”

Orwell says that Gandhi’s physical courage was very strong. No one has ever said that he is dishonest or too ambitious in a rude way. Even though he was the leader of a big political movement, he had no security. Anyone could walk into his ashram and attack him, which is exactly what happened in 1948 when he was shot dead.

Orwell says that Gandhi’s life was very easy. Gandhi was a very honest man, and he didn’t hide the fact that as a young man he had broken the law by smoking a few cigarettes, eating some meat, etc.

Some of Gandhi’s ideas seemed silly to Orwell because they made no sense from a European point of view. Some of these are not drinking alcohol, having sex, eating spices or animal food. Gandhi was very true to all of his beliefs. Even to protect his wife or child, he wasn’t willing to go against his beliefs. “On three occasions, Gandhi was willing to let his wife or child die rather than give them animal food as ordered by the doctor,” Orwell says that this is a point that calls into question Gandhi’s kindness.

Orwell is also surprised to learn that Gandhi didn’t like getting close to people. Gandhi said that close friendships can be dangerous. He says, “Friends react on each other,” which means that loyalty to a friend can lead someone to do something wrong.

When India got its independence in 1947, Gandhi had done what he had set out to do. But Orwell thinks that India got its freedom because the Soft Labour Party won the election in England. Gandhi’s peaceful methods could never have worked if people like Winston Churchill had been in charge.

Gandhi is not a saint in Orwell’s eyes. He also thinks that Gandhi’s main goals were against people and backward. At the same time, Orwell admitted that Gandhi was much more honest than most politicians of his time.

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George Orwell, then Eric Blair, stands third from left at the Burma Provincial Police Training School in 1923

Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux review – how Eric Blair became George Orwell

The evils of empire are brought to life in this fascinating imagining of Orwell’s days as a colonial policeman, but the perspective of Burmese people is sidelined

G eorge Orwell’s years as a colonial policeman in Burma in the 1920s preoccupied him for the rest of his life. Straight out of Eton, he was thrown into a world that mirrored the public school with its rivalries and floggings; except that now it was the Burmese people who were being flogged. He wrote about it repeatedly: in his 1934 novel Burmese Days, several essays, and passages devoted to Burma in The Road to Wigan Pier. Even on his deathbed he was writing notes for a novella about Burma entitled A Smoking Room Story. Now, Paul Theroux has taken on this material, with a novel that explores Burma as the place where Eric Blair became George Orwell .

There has been so much written about Orwell recently, from DJ Taylor’s casually magisterial biography , to Anna Funder’s intricately daring book about his first wife , to Sandra Newman’s high-wire feminist retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In her 2005 travel memoir Finding George Orwell in Burma , Emma Larkin discovers that Orwell’s great uncle had a Burmese mother.

This is a risky project for Theroux; there is always the danger in novels about writers that the dialogue becomes an embarrassing parody. He avoids this by focusing on Orwell’s blankness of character at this age. The dialogue is convincing because the inner Orwell remains hidden and the things he says are conventional and terse. Theroux uses this to suggest that all the time a secret self was developing: “his other self, the restless inquisitor, the doubter, the contrarian”.

The secret self is Orwell the writer, and, in the end, Theroux is writing for Orwell connoisseurs. We know very little about what Orwell was reading during these years, but Theroux imagines it all for him, moving from Wells to Lawrence to Forster. Theroux shows how these literary influences might combine with everyday experience to create the writer of Burmese Days. Indeed, phrases from the novel are seen to have their genesis in conversations here.

Beyond its interest for Orwell enthusiasts, I couldn’t decide if this book succeeded as a novel. It is rather fascinating in its portrait of Orwell’s ambivalence towards the empire he reviles and serves. If Burmese Days doesn’t have the reach and depth of Orwell’s best work, it’s because he was dishonest at this point in making his autobiographical hero a convinced rebel – “notoriously a bolshie in his opinions”. In fact, at the time Orwell had been more confused. One ex-Etonian visitor reported Orwell revelling in being a servant of the crown, and in his 1936 essay Shooting an Elephant he wrote, repellently, that “in the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves” (the “yellow faces” are bad enough; “sneering” turns the Burmese into Eton schoolboys).

Theroux takes these admissions and shows Orwell veering between ethical disdain and appalling complicity. We see Orwell presented with a series of moral tests – pulling a dead man’s ring off his finger and finding the whole finger comes with it; ordering the hanging of a man he knows to be innocent. When an elephant goes on the rampage and kills a man, he is faced with the appalling prospect of shooting it, largely to pacify the jeering onlookers because “no one in that crowd … would have respected the Burma sahib for doing nothing”.

Orwell fails as a policeman and he fails morally, with each test becoming more disillusioned with empire, yet more implicated in its methods. Assaulted by schoolboys, he longs for “a dah, to swipe at their skinny arms and slash their faces”. Inspired by Larkin’s research, Theroux invents a half-Burmese first cousin for Orwell, which works as a thought experiment by revealing Orwell’s embarrassed, small-minded racism (“the young half blood calling his mother Aunt Ida”).

Theroux brings the empire and its evils alive as a day-by-day experience. This is what writing the book as a novel enables him to do, in a way that more abstract academic discourses around colonialism can’t. But if it becomes most compellingly a book about empire, then that is also where its perspective is most limited. In that line about “yellow faces” Orwell was luxuriating in his own self-inculpation, and this is what Theroux’s Orwell does throughout. The problem is that at this point in history, the stories about Burma we need to read are not stories about the intricate feelings of the white men who colonised it.

The novel doesn’t seem especially troubled by this. The Burmese are here merely as supporting characters, with the women as exotic stereotypes, whose slippery delicacy contrasts with the no less stereotypical but more richly Lawrentian memsahib who orders Orwell into bed as an alternative to “frigging” herself.

I was left comparing Burma Sahib to Theroux’s 1981 novel The Mosquito Coast – at its heart a story about an anarchic empire builder with overreaching ambitions. The Mosquito Coast is also about the complex feelings of white men in the jungle, but it has aged well because of its madness and extremity. The portrait of white male angst there ballooned into a tragic portrayal of American fatherhood, and of America itself as doomed by the awful power of frontier fathers. The writing in Burma Sahib is in places just as brilliant, but it is precisely the exquisite rightness page by page that reminds us that Theroux now has less compelling things to say.

Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux is published by Hamish Hamilton (£20). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

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Reflections on Gandhi

By george orwell, reflections on gandhi essay questions.

Orwell argues that Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha was effective within specific historical and political conditions. Discuss the nature of these conditions and analyze Orwell's position. Do you feel that Satyagraha could be effectively transposed onto other political situations?

According to Orwell's analysis, Satyagraha was an effective means of demanding national self-determination in the context of British rule in India. Gandhi's method of assertive non-violence was deployable as a mode of resistance against British rule. The Satyagrahi, or practitioner of Satyagraha, was able reject participation in the British colonial system and to dramatize this sensational action and demonstrate it to the broader public by means of the free press available in that circumstance. Had the circumstances been different, and had the action of Satyagraha been used in resistance to something other than colonial rule, the outcome of this method would likely have been different as well. In the case of resistance to a totalitarian regime such as that of the USSR, Satyagraha would certainly have had a different outcome. It is not only would the demands that would have been different; a different way of gaining publicity would have been necessary.

In what ways does Satyagraha differ from passive resistance and other forms of western non-violence? Discuss the roots of the concept and the way those roots shape it.

The term Satyagraha that Gandhi developed and deployed in his resistance to British colonial rule in India derives from the Sanskrit satya: " truth," and agraha: " firmness," or "insistence." The resulting definition thus becomes something akin to "firmness in truth." Non-violence was also central to the Gandhi's practice and philosophy of Satyagraha. Unlike the concept of "passive" resistance, Satyagraha is defined by assertiveness, distinct from the submissiveness notable in the western concept of passive resistance.

Orwell suggests that British imperialists, as well as Indian millionaires, were not entirely put out by Gandhi's political agenda. What did he mean by this? Analyze his claim and discuss its possible implications.

As Orwell points out in the opening of his "Reflections on Gandhi," British imperialists often liked to refer Gandhi as one of their lads. Though Gandhi led the fight against British rule in India and arguably was the main actor in successfully achieving independence for India, the British were able to joke that he was one of their own. The non-violent resistance on which Gandhi insisted, Orwell suggests, was convenient for the British in that it came at no military cost to them. The same attitude went for the Indian millionaires. Unlike certain communists who wanted to force economic equality, Gandhi's demands on the millionaires was a spiritual one. Without outright criticizing Gandhi's method for its convenience to imperialists and capitalists, Orwell implicitly suggest that other, more militant methods were effective in making them much more uncomfortable. Implicit in this is a critique of non-violence.

What does Orwell mean when he says that western progressives, specifically anarchist and pacifists, mistake Gandhi for one of their own? Discuss Gandhi's differences from these groups and present an analysis of what Orwell suggests is Gandhi's anti-humanism.

One of Orwell's goals in "Reflections on Gandhi" is to place Gandhi's politics firmly in the historical circumstances from which they derived, and also to clearly define and analyze their unique philosophical roots. These philosophical roots, as Orwell demonstrates, are distinctly religious. More specifically, they are Hindu. In the Hindu worldview, the place of the human is decentralized. Orwell claims that, according to Hindu philosophy, all of life is an illusion, and thus human life is devalued. This leveling of existence is starkly different from the humanist hierarchy that the traditional western leftist values are rooted in.

Orwell is writing his essay with the Cold War in mind. How does he sees Gandhi's life and politics as being relevant to this time? Discuss the implications.

The prospect of the bomb looms over Orwell's "Reflections on Gandhi" in a way that cannot be overestimated. Writing the essay in 1949, four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell is explicitly conscious of the nuclear threat and its presence in any future war. The Cold War is in its inception during the writing of the essay, the arms race is beginning, and the threat of nuclear holocaust looms. It is for this reason that the question of non-violence is important to Orwell, and Gandhi serves as an important test case for the viability of a non-violent politics.

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Reflections on Gandhi Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Reflections on Gandhi is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why Gandhi sing "God save the king"?

I see no evidence of this in Orwell's, Reflections on Gandhi. One can infer, that Gandhi may have sung this in response to the fact India was a British colony, but he would have done this as a sign of respect.... not belief.

Describe George Orwell's narrative of Gandhi

One of Orwell’s central arguments is that Gandhi’s Satyagraha was only effective as a political leveraging tool due to the particular circumstances of his struggle: one such relevant circumstance was the Indian struggle for national...

What according to Orwell, is the popular image of Gandhi?

Orwell points out, home-spun cloth, “soul forces” and vegetarianism are popular images of Gandhi. He also calls him a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power.

Study Guide for Reflections on Gandhi

Reflections on Gandhi study guide contains a biography of George Orwell, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Essays for Reflections on Gandhi

Reflections on Gandhi essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Reflections on Gandhi by George Orwell.

  • Orwell on Gandhi: Probing an Icon

orwell gandhi essay

COMMENTS

  1. George Orwell: Reflections on Gandhi

    George Orwell: Reflections on Gandhi Index > Library > Reviews > Gandhi > English > E-text George Orwell Reflections on Gandhi Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.

  2. Reflections on Gandhi

    " Reflections on Gandhi " is an essay by George Orwell, first published in 1949, which responds to Mahatma Gandhi 's autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

  3. Reflections on Gandhi

    Friday 06 January 2012 Happy New Year, everyone! And with the new year comes a new Orwell essay on our site. First published in January 1949, Orwell's 'Reflections on Gandhi' reflected on the life and legacy of the Indian independence leader, who had died the previous year.

  4. George Orwell's Reflections on Gandhi : Summary and Analysis

    Orwell's Reflections on Gandhi is one of his most important essays probing the popular saint's personality, perspective and works from various angles. The author has tried his best to be impartial on Gandhi since even his adversaries were unable to remain uninfluenced by him.

  5. Orwell's 5 greatest essays: No. 2, 'Reflections on Gandhi'

    Orwell is often portrayed as a critic of Gandhi, and there certainly is criticism in this essay, but the author's ultimate judgment is the one that should stay with us, even more so for being...

  6. Essays and other works

    The Orwell Foundation is delighted to make available a selection of essays, articles, sketches, reviews and scripts written by Orwell. This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Orwell Estate.

  7. Reflections on Gandhi Summary

    George Orwell 's essay " Reflections on Gandhi " examines Gandhi's principal of non-violence, or Satyagraha ("holding on to the truth"), as a political tool. Orwell attempts to evaluate non-violence as a method of political leverage outside of the unique circumstances in which Gandhi successfully deployed his method.

  8. Orwell: Why I Write, BBC and Reflections on Gandhi

    Orwell ends his essay, asserting: "All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. ... Reflections on Gandhi. Orwell, who was born in India, in a place called Motihari in Bihar, had mixed feelings ...

  9. Orwell and Gandhi

    Go back and read the entire essay, which I treasure. To say, in the end, that Orwell dismissed Gandhi's "pacifism" as "idiotic" is simply wrong. Written on the occasion of Gandhi's murder, it is ...

  10. The Mahatma and the Policeman: how did George Orwell view Gandhi

    Gandhi and Orwell were implacable enemies of the injustice of imperial rule and worked to change the minds of those who sustained it. This campaign came to a climax with the end of British rule in India in 1947, which both lived to see. So what was it that prevented Orwell from seeing in Gandhi a kind of ally, a comrade in arms, even a hero?

  11. Reflections on Gandhi Study Guide

    Reflections on Gandhi Study Guide. " Reflections on Gandhi " was published in the Partisan Review in 1949, one year after Gandhi was assassinated and three years after Indian independence. Orwell takes up the question of the power of Gandhi's non-violence as a method of political action, and he considers this in the context of India's ...

  12. Reflections on Gandhi

    Analysis. Orwell's analysis of Gandhi's politics is based on Orwell's loose interpretation of Hinduism. Orwell builds his critique on certain generalizations about the religion as a whole, as well as an arguably unsubstantiated claim that Gandhi's worldview was definitively Hindu. Perhaps correctly, Orwell associates Gandhi's anti ...

  13. George Orwell's Reflections on Gandhi

    4 minutes criticism of gandhi "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent," says George Orwell in the opening lines of his essay Reflections on Gandhi. He wrote it a year after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi on 30 January, 1948.

  14. Reflections on Gandhi: (1949) by George Orwell

    In this short essay, George Orwell, most known for his searing satirical works against totalitarianism, examines, among other beliefs, Gandhi's non-violence and it's possible application to international conflicts such as World Word II. Originally published in Partisan Review (London, GB) in January 1949.

  15. How does George Orwell portray Gandhi in "Reflections on Gandhi

    In "Reflections on Gandhi," Orwell comes neither to bury nor praise the recently deceased Indian spiritual and political leader. Instead, he sets out to offer an even-handed account of his career ...

  16. PDF Orwell's Reflections on Saint Gandhi

    Abstract. In 1949, George Orwell published "Reflections on Gandhi," in which he offers a posthumous portrait of the Indian independence leader. My reading of the essay is at odds with some contemporary views voiced in the village of Motihari in Bihar, India, Orwell's birthplace as well as the site of an historic visit by Gandhi in 1917 ...

  17. The Failed Saint: On George Orwell's India

    It was just the sort of detail that Orwell would include in an essay, I thought, one more jab at the blustering state. ... In 1917, Mohandas Gandhi traveled to the East Champaran district, of ...

  18. Reflections on Gandhi Quotes and Analysis

    In the essay, Orwell discusses the depth of Gandhi's saintly authenticity, ultimately finding it consistent and genuine. "The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away

  19. Reflections on Gandhi Essay

    Orwell on Gandhi: Probing an Icon Anonymous College. George Orwell's 'Reflections on Gandhi'was published in Partisan Review a year after Gandhi's assassination, in January, 1949. There is an undeniable admission of admiration with which Orwell writes about his reception of Gandhi's writings and life, while offering a reproach that ...

  20. Analysis Of George Orwell 's ' Reflections On Gandhi ' Essay

    Open Document. George Orwell begins his essay "Reflections on Gandhi" from his book george orwells a collection of essays, which is a form of reviews that he did for a major newspaper about Gandhi's autobiography. Orwell begins responding by advocating the idea of sainthood and then reminds us that it is not applicable to Mahatma Gandhi ...

  21. Write summary of George Orwell's Essay "Reflections on Gandhi"

    1 Answer Best Answer ganesh bhandari Added an answer on December 2, 2022 at 6:10 am George Orwell wrote a piece of writing called "Reflection on Gandhi." He looks at Gandhi's life in this essay. The essay is a look back on the life of Gandhi. Orwell tried to understand Gandhi by reading "My Experiments with Truth," Gandhi's autobiography.

  22. how Eric Blair became George Orwell

    One ex-Etonian visitor reported Orwell revelling in being a servant of the crown, and in his 1936 essay Shooting an Elephant he wrote, repellently, that "in the end the sneering yellow faces of ...

  23. India's civil society is under attack

    I ndia's civil society is one of its biggest industries. It includes over 200,000 registered NGOs—more than the number of private firms in the country's agriculture and finance sectors.The ...

  24. Reflections on Gandhi Irony

    Reflections on Gandhi study guide contains a biography of George Orwell, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. ... I see no evidence of this in Orwell's, Reflections on Gandhi. One can infer, that Gandhi may have sung this in response to the fact India was a British colony, but he would ...

  25. Reflections on Gandhi Essay Questions

    1 Orwell argues that Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha was effective within specific historical and political conditions. Discuss the nature of these conditions and analyze Orwell's position. Do you feel that Satyagraha could be effectively transposed onto other political situations?