I read Gandhi’s autobiography, with the subject title, precisely half a century ago, when I was traveling through India the hard way, cheaply, not realizing at the time that I would be fulfilling Professor Gokhale's dictum to Gandhi. I purchased my copy in the country, very cheaply also, a shoddily produced product, though the words were the same as in the slick versions published in the West. Gandhi had a few eccentricities, for sure. Listing them would tend to discredit him. This movie of his life wisely never mentions them, though there are the slight allusions. The movie concentrated on the essential, well, truth of the matter: one very stubborn man took on the most powerful empire in the world and gained political independence for a third of a billion people. The question has been asked before, as it was in the movie: Would his tactics and actions have worked against Hitler, Stalin or Mao? We suspect not, though the question will always be hypothetical. Gandhi’s ideas and actions were based on the historical circumstances that were presented to him. And it is to the credit of the British people that they did work.
Sir Richard Attenborough directed this movie which was released in 1982. Ben Kingsley brilliantly plays Gandhi. My current doctor started life in the Punjab. I told him I had just watched the movie. His first comment, indeed, the comment of many is how much Kingsley looks like Gandhi. I agree. And Kingsley plays the part so well, stealing the stage. Oh, and my doc said: “I really need to have my (American) kids watch that.” Good advice for all of us, no matter where we started life.
The movie fittingly opens on January 30, 1948, showing Gandhi’s assassination less than half a year after the independence of India that he was largely responsible for. No, it was not by a fanatical Englishman distraught over the loss of his cushy home. Nor a Muslim, upset about the deaths of so many of his co-religionists during The Partition. He was killed by a fellow Hindu, a hard-right nationalist, who thought Gandhi had given too much away to “the other side.” A lesson for our own troubled times, as we have recently witnessed. Those who wrap themselves in the flag may be the first to injure our institutions and leaders.
There are numerous rich, beautifully filmed scenes that provides insights into the essence of the man. Gandhi was a lawyer! Freshly minted from University College, London, he went to South Africa and would wear a proper lawyerly three-piece suit. His dignity was a bit ruffled when he was unceremoniously thrown off the train in Pietermaritzburg for being “colored.” He spent a number of years rallying the local Indian community (the British imported Indians to many of their colonies, from Trinidad to Burma and Fiji). There’s a good scene of Gandhi winning a fight with one of South Africa’s giants: Jan Christian Smuts.
Gandhi is back in his native India in 1915. Professor Gokhale admonishes Gandhi: “See the real India, then you will know what to write. India is 700,000 villages, not a few hundred lawyers in Delhi and Bombay.” And so he does, tossing that three-piece suit into the dust-bin of history, thereafter dressing in homespun. Gandhi’s wife tells him that there are two forms of slavery in India: one for “untouchables,” the other for women. He wants to rid India of its evils and backwardness, without “importing the unhappiness of the West.” “Poverty”, Gandhi states, “…is the worst form of violence”.
The movie shows the British having their “Hitler/Stalin” moments when General Dyer commanded his troops to open fire on unarmed civilians at Amritsar, killing 1600. There is a great scene of one of my favorite metaphors, in which Attenborough literally films “the big boys" (the British leadership) with their cigars and brandy befuddled as to what to do with “this man,” (which is a polite formulation of what Churchill would call him).
Candace Bergen plays the delightful Margaret Bourke-White, taking the pictures by which most of us now visualize him.
Surely someone out there must object, but Alyque Padamsee brilliantly plays Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the father of modern day Pakistan. Padamsee just exudes “evil.” And indeed, in real life this womanizing hard-drinking, slick, Western-educated man was such an unlikely Muslim champion. Oh… the what if’s of history, as in, if this one man was more like Gandhi, might India never have been partitioned?
Peter Harlowe plays Lord Louis Mountbatten who peacefully lowers the British flag in 1947, recognizing Indian independence. In the tangled webs department, he himself would be assassinated by Irish extremists off Sligo, Ireland in 1979.
A great movie about a great man playing an outsized role in the sweeping drama of human history. 5-stars, plus.
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Reviews with images
Ben Kingsley. IS Mohandas Gandhi!
Ben Kingsley as Gandhi givers us a stunning representation of one of the most compelling spiritual and political leaders in BIG History,.I highly recommend this film, especially for young people searching for servant leadership today, fused closely together with deep moral conscience and pragmatic patience.Dave Bühler,PhD | Pax Christi USA & Lutheran Peace Fellowship
