PanThe GuardianApart from a number of minor, previously unknown details...Guha’s book repeats the narrative of Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biopic Gandhi. Guha presents no big argument, only small disagreements with Gandhi’s enemies and his own ... the only serious question it raises is whether a genuinely new biography of the man is even possible ... the answer might be to displace anything radical or at least illiberal about the Mahatma, the very thing with which genuinely new scholarship on him is concerned. But Guha doesn’t engage with this scholarship, seeking instead to defang Gandhi by downplaying the self-described \'philosophical anarchist,\' who stood for the remaking of social relations by the power of sacrifice. Confusing non-violence with pacifism, Guha passes over his hero’s difficult ideas in silence ... Guha is at the same time touchy and craven in his attitude towards the west’s relationship with his subject and with India ... His book does little more than veil India’s present with a fantasy of non-violence safely ensconced in the past.
