Readymade Ramayana

In the prologue to his account of Gandhi’s early career in England and South Africa, Ramachandra Guha declares, ‘There are some striking resemblances between the central character of this story and his counterpart in the great Indian epic, the Ramayana.’ These resemblances are said to comprise the themes of travel, exile, struggle and even marital mistreatment, all of which the Mahatma is meant to have shared with Rama.