George Orwell on Mahatma Gandhi: "R

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Subject: George Orwell on Mahatma Gandhi: "Revisiting Gandhi" (1949)

Orwell on Gandhi, 1949

Written fifty years ago, in a brief essay, Orwell, not indifferent to
what he calls "the essence of being human", reexamines Gandhi's "main
political objective, the peaceful ending of British rule" and how he
obtained it through his campaign of civil disobedience and non violence.
There are many insights by Orwell of the Gandhi experience in India here
that may be useful in grasping the problems presented by Burma and the
junta when it comes to mass arrests and civil disobedience in a world of
changing and different international political realities. 

Orwell writes, "the Brtish did get out of India without fighting, an
event which very few observers indeed would have predicted until about a
year before it happened. On the other hand, this was done by a Labour
government, and it is certain that a Conservative government, especially
a government headed by Churchill, would have acted differently."

Orwell rejects "the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never
made any such claim himself, by the way)" and grants that Gandhi did
in large part "disinfect the political air".

On the subject of filling up the jails with non violent protestors 
of civil disobedience and other pacifists, does arouse the world,
especially with the Internet means of communication, non existent during
Gandhi's era. Gandhi even proposed non violent pacifism by millions of
Jews better off to kill themselves in mass suicide than be killed by
Germans. "After the war, he jusitifed himself: the Jews had been killed
anyway, and might as well have died significantly...Gandhi was merely
being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be
prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged
non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to
admit that it might cost several million deaths."

On Gandhi's ascetic life, Orwell observes, "...finally -this is the
cardinal point - for the seeker after goodness there must be no close
friendships and no exclusive loves whatever. Close friendshisps, Gandhi
says, are dangerous, because 'friends react on one another' and through
loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is
unquestionably tru. Morevover, if one is to love God, or to love
humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual
person. This again is true, and it makes the point at which the
humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconciliable."

"...But let it be granted that non-violent resistance can be effective
against one's own government, or against an occupying power: even so,
how does one put it into practice internatinally? Gandhi's various
confliciting statements on the late war seem to show that he felt the
difficulty of this. Applied to foreign politicsz, pacifism eithr stops
being pacifist or becomes appeasement. Moreover the assumptions, which
served Gandhi so well in dealing with individuals, that all human beings
are more or less approachable and will respond to a generous gesture,
needs to be seriously questioned. It is not necessarily true, for
example, when you are dealling with lunatics. And is it not possible for
one whole culture to be insane by the standards of another? And, so far
as one can guage the feelings of whole nations, is there any apparent
connection between a generous deed and a friendly response? Is gratitude
a factor in international politics?