An amusing, insightful essay on the legacy of MK Gandhi by the noted sociologist Ashis Nandy:

There are four Gandhis who have survived Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s death. Fifty years after Gandhi’s (1861-1948) assassination, it may be useful to establish their identities, as the British police might have done in the high noon of colonialism. All the four Gandhis are troublesome, but they trouble different people for different reasons and in different ways. They are also useable in contemporary public life in four distinct ways. I say this not in sorrow, but in admiration. For the ability to disturb people — or, for that matter, be useable — one hundred and thirty years after one’s birth and fifty years after one’s death is no mean achievement. Frankly, I do not care who the real Gandhi was or is. Let academics debate that momentous issue. Contemporary politics is not about ‘truths’ of history; it is about remembered pasts and the problems of fashioning a future based on collective memories. For better or for worse, Gandhi seems to have entered that memory.

More here. A more recent related essay by Nandy here.