ABSTRACT
Gandhi's life and death have by now entered the realms of legend and myth. The logic and ethos of post-independence India is considerably different from that of the freedom struggle. The present 'religion' of India, which to all appearances seems to be consumerism, is at considerable odds with Gandhi's virtue-orientation and emancipatory commitment. Pandey quotes how a Muslim gentleman described Gandhi's arrival in Delhi: 'Sukhe dhanon mein pani pad gaya'. A journey like this does not have a destination, or at any rate one fixed closure: if it has a direction then it is from repression to redemption. For the one take-away from Gandhi's death is that Hindu-Muslim amity is the precondition for peace in the subcontinent. He also showed us how to be secular and deeply religious at the same time, how to be Sanatani Hindus without hating or disrespecting other religions, how to be Indian, even Asian, without opting out of a universal world culture.
