Gandhi: The End of Non-Violence

by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

Overview

Putting Gandhi center stage on the Hindu-Muslim conflict spanning from the Khilafat Movement (1919) to Partition (1946-1947), Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee critically engages with the ideas of Mohamad Ali, Iqbal, the Arya Samaj, Ambedkar, Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Savarkar. The tragic repercussions of Jinnah’s declaration of ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16th August 1946 leads Manash to ask probing questions on the persistent malady in our political history: How does communal politics descend into genocide? What is the psychology of communal violence? Attentively reading the exceptional witness accounts of Pyarelal, Nirmal Kumar Bose and Manu Gandhi.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143471707
Publisher:	Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a writer, political theorist and poet. He is the author of The Town Slowly Empties: On Life and Culture During Lockdown (2021), Looking for the Nation: Towards Another Idea of India (2018), and Ghalib's Tomb and Other Poems (2013).

Editorial Reviews

[An] outstanding counter-history of contemporary India… Bhattacharjee’s Gandhi keeps his mind in hell without permitting himself the luxury of despair

Howard Caygill

This book is an illuminating contribution to our understanding of Gandhi’s political and ethical thought– as well as of the end of British rule in India

Talal Asad

A robust and refreshing defence of Gandhi’s moral and political career

Faisal Devji

This book raises important persistent questions about the role of non-violence in public life, and also the nature of mass violence and its organization

Judith M Brown

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee brings his literary sensibility and philosophical inclination to this historically grounded study… as meditations upon the limits of both violence and non-violence and gives us a book of lasting value

Tridip Suhrud

This book is part of the rediscovery of Gandhi by a new generation… Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee’s Gandhi is a marvellous exploration

Ashis Nandy