ABSTRACT
A study of Indian myths and legends indicates that no matter how strong the younger challengers are the elders always win in the end. Gandhi's great, almost single-handed rejection of the dominant political culture of his times was voiced in his radical critique of modernity, Hind Swaraj. Gandhi pitted the traditional, virtue and liberation-oriented Indian civilization against the modern pleasure and consumption-driven civilization that was threatening to engulf India. Gandhian politics, according to Godse, 'was supported by old superstitious beliefs such as the power of the soul, the inner voice, the fast, the prayer and the purity of mind'. K. Mahadevan writing in the Times of India goes even farther, using references from Hindu mythology which assert the special, even divinely ordained missions of both the Mahatma and his assassin: Godse was to Gandhi what Kamsa was to Krishna. James offers a different, more obviously Christian interpretation, which turns Gandhi into a saint.
