Through Cracked Mirror: A Saga of Gandhi's Light & Shadow In Mahatma's Manifesto

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Talwar portrays Gandhi as a mariner of contradictions, a man who navigated India's liberation with a spinning wheel yet steered into waters of absurdity
Imagine a twilight realm where the setting sun casts long shadows across a dusty plain. In this liminal space stands the colossal figure of Mahatma Gandhi, his silhouette etched against the sky – a saint, a liberator, an enigma draped in homespun cloth.
Rajesh Talwar enters this scene not with a torch to burnish the icon, nor an axe to shatter it, but with a cracked mirror, its surface glinting with the promise of revelation. His critique of Gandhi's Hind Swaraj, The Mahatma's Manifesto, is not a mere academic dissection; it is a bard's tale, a narrative that dances between reverence and reckoning, weaving a tapestry both luminous and shadowed. Let us explore this landscape, tracing the contours of Talwar's narrative as it probes the soul of a man who liberated a nation, yet bound it with paradox.
Our tale begins on the turbulent waves of the Indian Ocean in 1909, aboard the Kildonan Castle, where Gandhi, a 40-year-old barrister turned visionary, commits his manifesto to paper – a slim scroll of 30,000 words titled Hind Swaraj. It is a clarion call against colonial chains, a hymn to self-rule, yet also a fervent sermon decrying modernity's trappings. Talwar, our guide, boards this ship not as a disciple bowing to a prophet, but as a navigator charting a tempestuous sea. In the preface, he reveals the inner turmoil he experienced upon first encountering Gandhi's words – a gale of agitation, a thunderclap of disbelief at the Mahatma's condemnation of machinery, medicine, law, and the English language. This inner storm propels our journey, driving a narrative that seeks not to idolise, but to illuminate.
Talwar portrays Gandhi as a mariner of contradictions, a man who navigated India's liberation with a spinning wheel yet steered into waters of absurdity. Picture the Mahatma on deck, his dhoti billowing like a flag of defiance, condemning railways as the Devil's chariot – yet historical accounts reveal he used them to mobilise his followers. He brands English a shackle on India's spirit, yet his own pen dances in that language with a barrister's grace, translating Hind Swaraj for the world. Talwar does not hurl these paradoxes like stones; he strings them like pearls, each a shimmering facet of a man both sage and enigma. The preface sets the stage: this is neither hagiography nor hatchet job, but a mirror held to a saint's face, reflecting a visage noble yet flawed.
THE WEAVER'S LOOM: UNRAVELLING GANDHI'S COMMANDMENTS
In Chapter 9, 'The Saint's Commandments', Talwar leads us to a metaphorical mountaintop, a Sinai where Gandhi lays down his laws. Here, the Mahatma's voice booms: shun machinery, embrace the handloom, let caste endure as an eternal flame. Talwar stands before this edifice not as Moses in awe, but as a weaver inspecting a loom. He finds the threads of Gandhi's vision tangled – some taut with wisdom, others frayed with folly. The Mahatma extols caste as a pillar of restraint, a system to organise society like a quilt of distinct patches. 'Hereditary principle is an eternal principle," Gandhi writes, as quoted by Talwar, a decree that fixes a Brahmin as a Brahmin, a Shudra as a Shudra, for fear of chaos. Yet Talwar examines this quilt, seeing not harmony but division, its seams stitched with the suffering of the untouchables and the tears of lovers forbidden to cross caste lines.
Gandhi's pronouncements grow even more perplexing. He likens eating to a 'dirty act," exalting the peace of defecation over the discomfort of a meal – a statement so bizarre it hangs in the air like a riddle. Talwar observes this not with scorn, but with the curiosity of a storyteller unearthing a relic. He notes Gandhi's later shift in 1925, softening his stance from rigid castes to the broader varna system – four grand divisions to 'reproduce the old system." Yet this evolution resembles a river only partially diverted, its waters still muddied by the silt of tradition. Talwar contrasts this with B.R. Ambedkar's sharp accusation, cited from a BBC interview, that Gandhi's English pronouncements masked an orthodox Hindu heart – a duality that resonates through Hind Swaraj like a drumbeat beneath a hymn.
The analysis deepens as Talwar probes Gandhi's intent. Was this mountaintop sermon a blueprint for utopia or a relic of nostalgia? The Mahatma offers no tools to build anew, only a spade to unearth an ancient India he deems pure. Talwar suggests this vision lacks substance – Gandhi rails against lawyers and courts but proposes no alternative system of justice; he damns doctors as worse than quacks, yet offers no remedy for the millions suffering from malaria. The commandments, then, are less a map than a mirage, shimmering with idealism yet dissolving under scrutiny. Talwar's narrative here is a tightrope walk – praising Gandhi's sincerity while exposing his flawed logic, a dance that keeps us teetering between admiration and dismay.
In Chapter 10, 'In Conclusion', Talwar leads us to a crossroads, a dusty junction where the past meets a present ablaze with conflict. By a flickering fire, he recounts Gandhi's legacy: the embers of non-violence glow brightly, a beacon for a world scarred by wars from Ukraine to Gaza. The Mahatma's ahimsa, forged in Hind Swaraj's dialogues, remains a life-giving force – its wisdom undeniable, its impact eternal. Yet Talwar whispers of ashes amongst these embers: Gandhi's disdain for modernity, his sexual experiments, his iron grip on his family. Picture a father sending his niece into the night in Noakhali to search for a lost bathing stone, or a son trudging 32 kilometres for forgotten spectacles – vignettes Talwar paints with a storyteller's brush, revealing a dictator beneath the saintly shroud.
The analysis sharpens as Talwar questions Gandhi's attire – that dhoti, a symbol of poverty's power. The world saw a gesture against British mills, a demonstration of solidarity with the poor; Talwar sees more – a rejection of all machinery, a crusade against progress itself. Gandhi's London days in pinstripes and spats, chronicled in the preface, clash with this ascetic garb, a metamorphosis from dandy to 'naked fakir" (as Churchill sneered). Talwar argues this was not mere political theatre but a deeply held belief: Gandhi believed factories were Satan's lair, railways the Devil's hooves. Yet he accepted Congress funds from mill owners, rode trains to his rallies – a hypocrisy Talwar threads into the narrative, not to wound, but to enhance our understanding.
The crossroads poses a question: Is Gandhi relevant today? Talwar hears the chorus of 'Yes!" from India's politicians and intelligentsia, a roar drowning out dissent. He acknowledges the eight Oscars awarded to the 1982 film Gandhi, the dignitaries at Shanti Van, yet presses further. Non-violence endures, yes, but what of the rest? The brahmacharya experiments, the enema obsession, the vaccine disdain – these are weeds in Gandhi's garden, choking the roses of ahimsa. Talwar cites Einstein's awe – 'I scarce believe such a man walked this earth" – but juxtaposes it with the physicist's likely shock at Gandhi's anti-science stance, a clash of titans unspoken. The Mahatma's relevance, Talwar concludes, is a flickering flame: brilliant where it warms, dim where it scorches.
THE MIRROR'S EDGE: TALWAR'S CRAFT AND CRITIQUE
Talwar's Manifesto is not a dry list of faults; it is a saga, a fireside yarn spun with metaphorical flair. His prose soars like a kite in a monsoon wind – vivid, daring, unafraid to plunge into the storm. Gandhi emerges as a titan of flesh and blood, a man who liberated a nation with a charkha yet entangled it in whimsy. Talwar's mirror reflects a dual Gandhi: the saint of satyagraha, whose dialogues in Hind Swaraj (penned as Editor versus Reader) sing with clarity, and the eccentric who deems the Eiffel Tower a tobacco-fuelled folly. The preface's agitation fuels this duality, a spark that ignites each chapter.
The analysis shines in Talwar's balance. He lauds Gandhi's non-violence as a 'river that still quenches," a legacy echoing from Jallianwala Bagh to global protests. Yet he wields a scalpel on the absurd: the caste rigidity, the machinery phobia, the silences on the brutality of untouchability. He cites Ambedkar's critique – Gandhi's Gujarati orthodoxy versus English piety – as a lens through which to view Hind Swaraj's divided soul. Talwar's refusal to reconcile Gandhi's contradictions (as he notes in the preface) is bold; he lets them stand raw, like jagged cliffs in a serene valley, trusting readers to navigate the terrain.
For India's youth, to whom the book is dedicated, this is a clarion call – not to topple the statue, but to examine its foundations. Talwar's narrative is a bridge from reverence to reason, strewn with lotuses blooming in muddy ponds – metaphors that linger. The preface's intent – to counter Hind Swaraj's five-star Amazon reviews – becomes a quest: to unmask a Gandhi lost to myth, a man whose true face differs from the bespectacled smile on rupee notes. The chronology anchors this quest, tracing Gandhi's arc from London dandy to loincloth prophet, a timeline Talwar mines for irony and insight.
THE FINAL ECHO: A TALE WORTH TELLING
The Mahatma's Manifesto is not an easy read – not for its density, but for its challenge: to confront an unpolished Gandhi, a saint with clay feet. Its words are a treasure chest cracked open, spilling jewels of insight amid the dust of critique. Talwar's story lingers like a chanting echo, a melody of praise and probing. It is a mirror held at dusk, capturing Gandhi's light and shadow in equal measure – a tale that dares us to see the Mahatma not as a monolith, but as a man, flawed yet phenomenal, whose legacy we must sift like grain from chaff.
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This review, from preface to conclusion, is a journey through Talwar's lens – a lens both poetic and piercing. Should more chapters emerge, the tale can only grow richer; for now, it stands as a saga of a saint revisited, a manifesto reimagined, and a mirror bravely raised.
The author is an architect and historian. This extract has been taken from his introduction to his book, 'Babur: The Chessboard King', with the permission of the publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
Location :
New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
June 15, 2025, 19:31 IST
News opinion Opinion | Through Cracked Mirror: A Saga of Gandhi's Light & Shadow In Mahatma's Manifesto