<p>The life of Mahatma Gandhi has transformed into legend. In Mahatma Gandhi: The Great Indian Way, Raja Rao upends the genre of the literary biography with an inventive non-linear chronology, through dialogue and anecdote, situating the physical within the metaphysical and with a text that is both retrospective and contemporary at the same time. By mapping genealogies and distilling them, Rao focuses on Gandhi's years in South Africa, the birth of nonviolent resistance and then moves into the epic freedom struggle in India, which brought Gandhi to worldwide renown in his own lifetime. With an emphasis on the idea of <span class="italic">dharma</span> as a framework for Gandhism, both in South Africa and India, this is the story of the man as much as the Mahatma. The non-linear chronology that Raja Rao, a celebrated writer of his times, adopted, is unprecedented for any biography of Gandhi — a writing that Rao claimed to be ‘an experiment in honesty’.</p>
<p>The life of Mahatma Gandhi has transformed into legend. In Mahatma Gandhi: The Great Indian Way, Raja Rao upends the genre of the literary biography with an inventive non-linear chronology, through dialogue and anecdote, situating the physical within the metaphysical and with a text that is both retrospective and contemporary at the same time. By mapping genealogies and distilling them, Rao focuses on Gandhi's years in South Africa, the birth of nonviolent resistance and then moves into the epic freedom struggle in India, which brought Gandhi to worldwide renown in his own lifetime. With an emphasis on the idea of <span class="italic">dharma</span> as a framework for Gandhism, both in South Africa and India, this is the story of the man as much as the Mahatma. The non-linear chronology that Raja Rao, a celebrated writer of his times, adopted, is unprecedented for any biography of Gandhi — a writing that Rao claimed to be ‘an experiment in honesty’.</p>
