Gandhi and le gandhisme: Writing Indian Decolonisation and the Appropriation of Gandhi 1919–48

Abstract

As research by Markovits (2000) has shown, and contemporaries conceded, European writing on Indian moves towards ending the British colonisation of the subcontinent is invariably distilled into one discrete form of representation: le gandhisme and Gandhi. The present article, by examining this colligation of the story of Indian decolonisation to the biography of one man, will reveal a nexus of texts which illuminate a distinctive French-language tradition of writing India. Periodising Indian decolonisation from 1919 (when metropolitan writers first took an interest in Gandhi's hartal or general strike) to 1948 (Gandhi's assassination), its primary focus is how Gandhi's French contemporaries represented and, indeed, appropriated him. By similarly considering texts produced outside this period, the article reveals that certain strategies of representation are pervasive, and that the conflation of the story of Gandhi with the narrative of Indian decolonisation is an important reference point within French cultural production.