Roderick Matthews the author of the book tries to answer these questions in a fair-and-square manner just as a British writer can do. How did two educated personalities such as Jinnah and Gandhi find themselves on opposite ends? How did Jinnah, who was a secular liberal, end up a Muslim nationalist? How did a God-fearing moralist and social reformer like Gandhi become a national political leader?
The author try to solve these questions in his book and he expose how these two excellent personalities of the independence movement India- Pakistan who were always on the opposite ends of any debate of the day.
This book focuses on the similarities and differences between the two leaders, as their admirers and detractors would have it and as they actually were.
Both Jinnah and Gandhi had become disappointed by the time they finally achieved their lives mission.
Jinnah was unhappy that he got Pakistan, he was convinced that he would walk away with a new nation with the Provinces of Punjab and Bengal intact. Gandhi on the other hand had to accept the inevitable reality of a dismembered India. In the final days, Jinnah’s health failed him when his nation needed him the most, Gandhi had become politically irrelevant post-Independence as he was to the exalted status of a saint out of touch with modern-day realities of an emerging nation.
