Summary
In the opening of part two, Orwell distinguishes between Gandhi’s views and those of the Western left-wing movement—specifically anarchists and pacifists. Gandhi’s popularity within the left seems to Orwell to be misguided: he suggest that the left mistakes Gandhi’s politics for their own, when in fact certain vital differences are going unrecognized. Orwell says that Western anarchists and pacifists celebrate Gandhi as one of their own because of his opposition to colonial regulation and state violence. But what they fail to recognize, he says, is the religious nature of Gandhi’s politics.
Orwell views Gandhi as an anti-humanist, with a relativist worldview that derives from his religious outlook. Orwell says that one cannot subscribe to Gandhi’s political ethics without also subscribing to this outlook. He summarizes it as being one in which human life is devalued in relation to all other life; and the world as a whole is an illusion. While a Western left-wing view would place human life above all else, Gandhi levels the value of all things, placing human life on par with everything else. Gandhi's politics work by devaluing human life. In order to serve humanity or the world as Gandhi attempts to do, one must be devoted to the idea that one's own life is worth less than the integrity of the whole, and thus be willing to offer it in return for the principal of truth for which they are fighting.
Orwell then lists the various ways that Gandhi practiced and professed his devaluation of human life. What this adds up to is a mode of asceticism that Gandhi felt was right for everyone, though he wouldn’t impose it on anyone. Each individual had to find it within. The only way for this mode of life to be realized would be if people found it within themselves to practice it. The essence of Orwell's discussion here is to demonstrate the incompatibility of Gandhi’s beliefs with those of the left: “One must choose between God and Man, and all ‘radical” and “progressives” from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man” (211). Despite this fundamental difference between Gandhi’s mode of politics and that of the Western left, Orwell suggests that there remain aspects of Gandhi’s pacifism that can in fact be separated out from his religious teachings. At least Gandhi himself claimed that that was possible, that his method could be transferred to different contexts. Whether and how this is possible is ultimately the central and concluding question of the essay.
Orwell suggests that there is something in the concept of Satyagraha that is distinct from Western pacifism. Though it entailed a commitment to non-violence, it was not a passive form of political action, and it was not about non-participation. On the contrary, in the specific context where Gandhi first developed Satyagraha as a political tool (his struggle for South Asian rights in South Africa), the method required a willingness to endure police beatings, legal threats, imprisonment, and threats to one's very life. The translation that Orwell finds for Satyagraha is “firmness in truth” (211). This truth had a partisan expression.
Unlike Western pacifists who opposed violence in general, Orwell states that Gandhi took sides. This was necessary due to the national self-determination agenda of Gandhi’s struggles. He could not in good faith have suggested that both sides were of equal value. Orwell then discusses how or whether Gandhi’s method would have held up outside of anti-colonial struggles.
In a struggle against a totalitarian regime, Gandhi’s method would not have been effective at all, Orwell argues, because he would never have received the media coverage necessary to give his agenda leverage. Gandhi’s efforts were entirely dependent on their sensational quality. In order for them to be publicized and to subsequently mobilize massive support, Gandhi relied on a free press. In a totalitarian regime, Gandhi’s actions would never have been known. Orwell then asks how many Gandhis there are currently resisting the Soviet Union. Beyond this point, Orwell also questions the place of non-violence in international politics. How would the non-violent appeal be made to a Hitler, for example, or to other potentially insane heads of state? It seems to Orwell that on the international stage, non-violence could easily become acquiescence.
Yet while these questions exist, they are not enough for Orwell to dismiss the principle, especially in the early nuclear stage in which he writing the essay. Stating that another world war could mean the end of civilization, he feels that the discussion of non-violent politics is of the utmost urgency.
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-materialism and relativism with Hinduism. But he begins from the presumption that these principals are definitively and inextricably Hindu. These principles he sees as being central to Gandhi’s concept of Satyagraha.
While the concept linguistically derives from Sanskrit and Gujarati, it doesn't necessarily have a clear religious derivation. The term derives from the Sanskrit satya: "truth," and agraha: "firmness," or "insistence." The resulting definition thus becomes something akin to "firmness in truth." This is roughly how Gandhi defined it himself, weaving in the concept of non-violence as he evolved and developed his principles and practice.
Orwell's main interested here is in distinguishing Satyagraha from forms of western pacifism. Western pacifists and leftists too easily adopt Gandhi as one of their own, Orwell argues, without understanding their fundamental difference. That difference, Orwell feels, is a fundamental religious one. One cannot take up Satyagraha, Orwell argues, without also taking up Hinduism. Though Orwell doesn't break down the religious attributes of Satyagraha, it may be possible to interpret the concept of "truth" as having a spiritual element. What is this "truth" to which one must be so committed in order to be a sincere Satyagrahi? It may be possible that the belief in an overriding "truth" is itself a religious belief. Still, Gandhi made sure to refer to the truth as "one's" truth, necessarily found within by each individual.
Orwell goes on to point out that unlike the concept of "passive" resistance, Satyagraha is defined by assertiveness, distinct from the submissiveness notable in the western concept of passive resistance. Furthermore, Orwell argues that Satyagraha is different than western pacifism in that it is always partisan. He argues that Gandhi is not simply against violence in some general way. Rather Gandhi uses Satyagraha as a political tool to achieve a very partisan cause: that of Indian self-rule. Unlike pacifism, the concept of “firmness in truth” has an energy to it that makes it a form of active opposition. Orwell is ultimately interested in whether or not this could work as a political method outside of a struggle for national self-determination.
In the essay he highlights totalitarianism as being a political system that would seem impossible to oppose with Satyagraha. He rhetorically asks: how many Satyagrahi's are currently being silenced and tortured in Soviet prisons? Gandhi's method certainly required the publicity that only a free press and the freedom to congregate make possible. Yet while Orwell provides a helpful illustration of how Gandhi's particular method was contingent on historical and political circumstance, Orwell himself is limited to his own circumstance. Writing in 1949, he didn't yet have the opportunity to consider many other, more complex and nuanced political situations that might later arise, and to imagine the ways that Satyagraha might have played out in these later circumstances.
