Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s Tagore & Gandhi: Walking Alone, Walking Together is an arresting book laced with fresh insights and perspectives, notwithstanding that it is about a subject that is well-trodden in the annals of academia. Tagore and Gandhi both bestrode the Indian firmament like two towering Colossuses. Attempting a book on either of them is fraught with danger; and, therefore to write one successfully where both of them are intricately woven together in its pages ought to be a rare feat of intellectual accomplishment. This is because both Gandhi and Tagore evoke passionate responses —ranging from hagiographic to downright unfair—amongst their followers and critics alike; and, often, it becomes well-nigh impossible to do justice to the complex, sometimes intriguing, relationship between them.
October 2022, volume 46, No 10