around the time of independence , the metaphor of madness is best exemplified by pandit jawaharlal nehru , who , in his address to the nation on january 31 , 1948 , the morning after the assassination of mahatma gandhi , said ,  a madman has put an end to his life , for i can only call him mad who did it . events between 1857 and 1947 brought to the fore , both metaphorical concepts of madness and sanity as well as psychopathological manifestations of contemporary political preoccupations . in 1857 , john nicholson planned his long march from his cantonment in punjab to delhi , to recapture delhi and overthrow the last mughal emperor , bahadur shah zaffar , who had become the center for the first war of independence . nicholson was an irishman , an army commander , rather colorful , someone who could be called almost psychopathic . he had allegedly impressed the sikhs so much with his reckless valor and dash , that he had a sect named after him as nickel - seyni 's , who were prepared to obey his orders to the end . a year earlier , while at bannu in the north - west frontier , when a man with a long sword had rushed him one morning , nicholson , grabbing a musket from one of his guards , ordered him to put the sword down . when the man refused , and insisted that  either he or i must die , nicholson shot him dead , and commented in a letter that  the poor wretch turns out to be marwutee who had been religiously mad for some time  his spiritual instructor disappeared entirely , and i am afraid , gone into the hills . in the aftermath of 1857 , in addition to the various hangings , beheadings , and blowing away from cannons , some individuals did find their way into lunatic asylums . as a soldier visiting the asylum in benares on august 24 , 1861 described :  among the many idiots there confined was one calling himself a pundit , who talked so fast and long as to the destruction of the europeans in india that one would almost credit him with sanity , were he not known to be otherwise ; vehement in his manner of delivery as to his determination in regard to all white faces he certainly must have had some knowledge of what had transpired in the mutiny and as we saw that he desired to continue his conversation on that topic the warder cut him short by ordering him into his cell and locking him up . h , an irishman living in delhi , began saying that he had become a duke , and that his pay had been stolen by the british government and spent on buying oranges ( ! ) . he converted to islam at the jama masjid , and took the name ahmed din . he said he was on the way to kabul , as the russians were expected to help the muslims to overthrow the british . he exhorted the muslims to unite , and get ready for the event , and meet the russians in peshawar . across the road , in the garrison at the red fort , the british became very worried . h had a deeper knowledge of the  great game  of kipling , or a prescient vision of the afghanistan and south asian power games of the europeans is unclear ! this caused much consternation , and furore in delhi , because it was widely believed that he had been labeled insane for deciding to convert from christianity to islam , rather than the other way around . the population of delhi was thought to be  highly excitable ,  as the events of 1857 had shown , and it was thought prudent to not keep him in the delhi asylum . he was shifted to the asylum at colaba , bombay ( where there was a small asylum for the british , en route to the asylums in the uk ) maintained by the east india company . the authorities perhaps realized the political impact of certain ideas , even though the source of these ideas could be defined to be bereft of reason . in contrast , another patient in the delhi asylum wanted to help queen victoria , by interceding in the north west , and rule kabul on her behalf . mr . imrit , in the delhi asylum in 1883 , claimed he was the descendant of the sen dynasty ( a hindu dynasty that ruled bengal in the 1112 centuries ) . he said that he had leased india on contract to the british for 80 years , after which he would divide it between the russians and the chinese ( predating the dissensions among bengals intellectuals between marxist and maoist ideas by a century ) . habib shah , who was discovered one morning in 1883 on the emperors throne at the diwan - e - am in the red fort , claiming to be the emperor , and the last of the mughal dynasty as he had been sent by nizam - ud - din ( the sufi patron saint of the mughal empire ) . how he reached there , the fort being an army encampment , remained a mystery . in any case , when rulers call each other mad , madmen have every right to be rulers too ! ! whether the  great game  had already seeped into the consciousness of the community , including those who were admitted into the asylums ; or was it the creation of madmen that spread from the asylums into the community is still open to conjecture . ideas about the independence of india gradually spread all over india and even in in the kingdom of mysore , patients were to occasionally describe such preoccupations . as the politics of the region became more fractious and unreasonable , the growing communal problem was often viewed as a sign of madness . a tract written in 1943 set about describing the various machinations going on as the political insanity of india ( vakeel 1943 ) . commenting on the  orgy of vituperation , slogans , alternating threats of civil disobedience and retirements into wilderness  indulging in torrents of verbosity vakeel bemoans that by  exploiting passions on all sides  a  few are guiding the many to disaster  as they are responsible with their fantastic hallucinations and interpretations of freedom and slavery for a good deal of unhappiness in the country . he was very worried that in the near future , many would suffer for the sins of a few and warned that  what i am writing is portentous  a few years later , when all that had been predicted had indeed come to pass , many commentators did indeed invoke the vision of madness as being responsible for the violence during the partition . early in september 1947 , gandhi referred to the violence following the declaration of independence as  let it be said of them that the inhabitants of delhi had gone mad temporarily but that sanity had now returned  . since this recovery was short lived and frequent relapses of pointless violence and intemperate speech occurred , he again issued a plea for a  return to sanity ,  a few days before he was assassinated . a reporter covering the funeral of mahatma gandhi , and sitting with nehru on the deck of the gun carriage that formed the cortege , commented on how the procession was delayed on the banks of the yamuna , by a madman dancing in front of the carriage . the whole procession came to a halt , while the man was ( presumably kindly ) led , away . many ideas that have guided recent history were once thought to be inimical to social order , even dangerous , or symptoms of madness . we are all familiar with the persecution of galileo for overturning the shared belief that the sun revolved around the earth , and the many ideas of newton which transformed the world . newton formally believed in alchemy , and wrote principia mathematica during a prolonged period of seclusion , allegedly an episode of nervous breakdown . the world of politics is also well populated by accounts of the madness of kings , but it is the madness of the people often reflects the madness of their kings . such notions of what stands in the realm of reality , wishful thinking , imagination and what borders on over - valued ideas or even delusions are resonant in contemporary times . several books with titles such as imagining india and re - imagining india have emerged over the past two decades . the borders between imagination and delusion being somewhat hazy , as these accounts show , in the clinical context , they could obviously be of concern , particularly in political and religious contexts . as pope pointed out in the 19 century , that being  irrational , the insane though in the state are not of the state . on the other hand , although not of the state the insane are yet in the state.9  in view of this complexity , it is only logical that the borders between madman and the state are somewhat permeable , and both their histories intertwined . the work was supported by a grant from the wellcome trust  turning the pages  ( wt096493ma ) . the work was supported by a grant from the wellcome trust  turning the pages  ( wt096493ma ) .
the backdrop of the indian independence offers glimpses of many  metaphors of madness. in this article , we explore this through a few instances , starting from 1857 , around the time of the first war of independence , to 1947 , when india became an independent nation . 
 such metaphors have their parallels both in historical as well as in contemporary times , where instances of one man 's imagination becoming another 's concept of irrationality and insanity continue .