ABSTRACT
This chapter critically analyses the visual aesthetics of selected political cartoons problematizing the figure of Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian nationalist struggle. By critically analysing the discourse that shapes around Gandhi through the world of political animation, the paper directs attention to the respective representations of the Mahatma as a somatic complex of transcendental spirituality in the nationalist Indian press, as the most obstinate denigrator of the Muslim point of view in the non-nationalist Muslim press, and, as primarily a human figure of victimhood in the Colonial press. This critical reading is performed by regarding cartoons as a fundamentally rhetorical expression laden with propaganda and including complex references to social history.
