‘Thank You, Gandhi’ by Krishna Kumar is a rare and unforgettable book. Once you have turned its last page, it is indeed destined to stay with you. It poses a deeply troubling question that has haunted me, as it would any thoughtful person: Has India been irreversibly transformed, moving toward a politics that normalizes hate, violence, and inequity? The book’s answer is startling: as Gandhi believed, such violence is inseparable from the modern state, which claims absolute dominion over democracy and people. Thus, the politics of violence has always been, and will remain, entrenched in modernity—an idea that even many liberals, secularists, left-wingers, and progressives thought would finally bring emancipation to human society. The book suggests that the dream of an India that decisively challenges the violence of modernity is nearly lost, and the nation is poised to pay a heavy price for it.

How would Gandhi have viewed the state of the nation to which he devoted his life? The book explores this question in these troubled times through a near-imaginary dialogue between Munna (Viresh Pratap Singh, a former IAS officer and childhood friend of Krishna Kumar) and Gandhi. Munna, devastated by a stroke and shock upon learning of a candidate’s victory (representing BJP who has been openly praising murderer of Gandhi) in Bhopal—a city he served during the desperate aftermath of the Union Carbide gas leak tragedy—sinks into a depression that persists until his death while engaged in COVID-19 relief work as a volunteer. Just days before his passing, he sends his unfinished manuscript to his closest friend, Krishna Kumar, which resulted in this book. Thus, the true authorship of this meta-semi-autobiographical novel is shared by Krishna Kumar and Munna (Viresh Pratap Singh).

The book lays bare the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the middle classes and state officials who comfortably conflated the project of  modernising Indian society with their vested interests, presenting themselves as deserving vanguards of the nation. This fusion, it argues, has set the stage for a profound national loss in the form of the rise of the right wing in India. Conveyed through a confessional account of Munna’s life as an honest IAS officer who, despite his resolute, and living a life on Gandhian principles, felt compelled for being just a cog in the wheel of the state. The narrative fosters a deep realization of Gandhi’s true meaning and his daring honesty, despite the mockery his ideas were provided with, and shows how his warnings about modernity are indeed becoming reality. First, I must thank Krishna Kumar for not mincing words and daring to come out openly, driven by affection for his childhood friend.

From the depths of my heart, I say: Thank you, Munna, for introducing me to Gandhi in these troubling times and revealing that, despite the ridicule he and many of his ideas endured, his predicament indeed remains our dilemma today. I hope India is not lost to this storm and continues to be the great teacher as it has been to so many.

(Cover Photo Credit: Penguin)

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