New Delhi, July 21 -- 'Thank You, Gandhi' by Krishna Kumar is a rare and unforgettable book. Once you have turned its last page, it is indeed destined to stay with you. It poses a deeply troubling question that has haunted me, as it would any thoughtful person: Has India been irreversibly transformed, moving toward a politics that normalizes hate, violence, and inequity? The book's answer is startling: as Gandhi believed, such violence is inseparable from the modern state, which claims absolute dominion over democracy and people. Thus, the politics of violence has always been, and will remain, entrenched in modernity-an idea that even many liberals, secularists, left-wingers, and progressives thought would finally bring emancipation to hu...