歐威爾最偉大的五篇散文：第二篇，《對甘地的反思》
作者： 麥可‧希爾茨克
甘地崇高的道德聲譽往往蒙蔽了我們今天的雙眼，使我們忽視了他在同時代大英帝國人士心目中所扮演的角色——政治活動家。
奧威爾努力在他對那些被奉為聖人的自然懷疑（「聖人應該一直被判有罪，直到他們被證明是無辜的」）和他對甘地本人的欽佩之間取得平衡，同時承認甘地的原則和活動有時會服務於他的對手的利益。
他寫道，印度的英國統治者利用了甘地，「或者認為他們在利用他……因為在每一次危機中，他都會竭盡全力阻止暴力——從英國人的角度來看，這意味著阻止任何有效的行動——他可以被視為『我們的人』。」 ……印度百萬富翁們的態度也類似。甘地呼籲他們悔改，他們自然更傾向於甘地，而不是社會主義者和共產黨人，因為如果有機會，他們真的會把他們的錢財都拿走。
在這裡，我們可以發現奧威爾對各種形式的政治行動，特別是非暴力政治行動的一些最令人著迷的思考。奧威爾經常被描繪成甘地的批評者，這篇文章中當然也包含批評，但作者的最終判斷應該留在我們心中，尤其應該留在我們對甘地本人和政治家的記憶還很鮮活的時候：
“他的性格極其複雜，但幾乎沒有什麼可以指出是壞的，我相信，即使是甘地最大的敵人也會承認他是一個有趣且不尋常的人，他僅僅通過活著就豐富了世界。”
Orwell’s 5 greatest essays: No. 2, ‘Reflections on Gandhi’
By Michael Hiltzik
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.”
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