Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1: The Mahatma as Proof: The Nationalist Origins of the Historiography of Indian Writing in English; Chapter 2: ?The Mahatma didn't say so, but ...?: Mulk Raj Anand's ?Untouchable? and the Sympathies of Middle-Class Nationalists; Chapter 3: ?The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but ...?: Raja Rao's ?Kanthapura? and the Religious Imagination of the Indian, Secular, Nationalist Middle Class; Chapter 4: The Missing Mahatma: Ahmed Ali and the Aesthetics of Muslim Anticolonialism; Chapter 5: The Grammar of the Gandhians: Jayaprakash Narayan and the Figure of Gandhi; Chapter 6: The Mahatma Misunderstood: The Arrested Development of the Nationalist Dialectic; Conclusion: Dangerous Solidarities; Notes; Bibliography; Index

?The Mahatma Misunderstood? is a study of the fiction about Gandhi produced in his lifetime, and explains why novelists both vehemently critiqued and lovingly collaborated with the Mahatma simultaneously.