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. Orwell discusses the particular context that gave Satyagraha political force: the struggle for national self-determination in colonial India. He compares this to other political circumstances where, he says, Satyagraha would not have had the same effect—for example, under a totalitarian regime where it would not have had the publicity it needed to galvanize the populations of England and India. Satyagraha needed a free press in order to be an effective political tool. It thus wouldn’t work as a resistance to a totalitarian force where free speech is suppressed and dissidents detained. Nonetheless, Orwell does not dismiss Gandhi’s method. Published during rising nuclear tensions of the early Cold War, Orwell looks to Gandhi’s method as a reference for what he feels is a necessary discussion of alternative methods of political resistance.