"Gandhi," The Movie & History

Updated August 24, 2014: The producer and director of "Gandhi," Sir Richard Attenborough, died today just days short of his 91st birthday. This is a series of four articles I did on the movie and the actual history of Gandhi and India. I relied heavily upon notes I made from a book I once owned for much of the information in these articles: "Gandhi: A Life," by Yogesh Chadha, published in New York by John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

The film "Gandhi" was released in late 1982. The movie was more than three hours in length and was produced and directed by English actor/director Sir Richard Attenborough. Just a couple of years after the film was released, I actually met one of the Indian actors of the film (relatively minor role), as we were staying in the same hotel in Frankfurt, (then, West) Germany. "Gandhi" won the Academy Award for "Best Picture" and Richard Attenborough won the Oscar for "Best Director."

If you have never seen this movie, PLEASE do so. In a world filled with such troubles as we have today, I can't believe you would EVER regret it. The film deals with the life of Mohandas Gandhi,* who was born in Porbandar, on the western coast of India. The movie traces much of Gandhi's adult life from the time he went to southern Africa (Natal, a British colony) as an attorney to represent an Indian business.** There he met ruthless discrimination and became determined to fight it, albeit peacefully. He gradually organized the relatively small Indian community in the colony and gave the colonial authorities more than they could handle, achieving some significant civil rights victories for Indians in South Africa. This made Gandhi a force to be reckoned with years later when he returned to his homeland, then too a colony of the British Empire.

Gandhi gradually assumed the leadership of a movement to bring independence to India, a process that took Gandhi and his followers nearly three decades to achieve. During that time he also worked to bring attention to India's excruciating poverty and to try to bridge religious differences within the populace. His plan and beliefs for independence were governed by peaceful non-cooperation with the British and Indian princely authorities. With newsreels shown in movie houses all over the world, Gandhi's peaceful protests were filmed being forcefully put down by colonial police or military forces, a sight that gradually lowered British prestige, but which raised Gandhi's stature throughout the world, including in Britain. Some of Gandhi's followers became frustrated as the Mahatma (see "Word History" below) plodded along against British imperial rule, but he seems to have wanted to prepare Indians for the assumption of self rule.

Just a little history overview: Britain firmly established itself in India during the mid 1700s, but it must be noted that the "India" of those times was far larger than the present nation, as it included what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh. The British ran a colonial government in India, but they also relied heavily upon regional Indian princes to govern the immense country. The northwestern areas and the eastern areas were heavily Muslim in religion, while Hindus generally had a majority in the rest of the country (and overall), although Muslim minorities were widespread. As Indians strove for independence from Britain under the overall leadership of Gandhi, religious differences in India were relatively muted, but once Britain agreed to grant Indian independence in the future, the question of how religion would be handled in the governing of the country became a red-hot issue. Gandhi, while a Hindu, embraced people of all faiths, including Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Jews, but while he was highly respected by all groups within India, his tolerance of other religions was not accepted by everyone, and religious-based violence erupted. Even Gandhi could not defeat the terrible feelings and hatred caused by the bloodshed, and in spite of his attempts to hold the nation together, a major movement developed among India's Muslim population to form a separate Muslim-majority state to be called "Pakistan." In the end, India was divided, with an independent Pakistan comprising two distinct regions, one in the northwest and one in the east, but separated by a thousand miles, and then the rest of India, with a Hindu majority, but with a substantial Muslim minority, as it remains to this day. Later the eastern part of Pakistan, initially known as East Pakistan, became independent as Bangladesh in the early 1970s.

Next, in Part Two I'll cover a few events in Gandhi's life.

* We Americans "tend" to pronounce the name as "gawn-dee," but British pronunciation "tends" to be more "gandee," which rhymes with, ah...Randy. I just thought that up. Gandhi was portrayed in the movie by actor Ben Kingsley, who is of Indian descent on his father's side. Kingsley won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his excellent performance as the peaceful Indian revolutionary.

** Gandhi had studied law in London, England.

Photo is of DVD edition released in 2001 by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment.

WORD HISTORY:
Mahatma-This is a title given in India to someone as a sign of great respect, typically for their great knowledge and ability to give counsel to others; literally it means "great soul." It is a compound, with the first part tracing back to Indo European "megh," which meant "great." The second part, "atman," means "soul, spirit," but its original meaning was "breath." This gave Old English and its other Germanic relatives their original word for "breath," which was "aethm" in Old English. German still has "Atem" as its word for "breath" (as well as the verb "atmen," "to breathe"). The compound "mahatman" goes back to Sanskrit (an early Indo European language/dialect). "Mahatma" came into some usage in English in the latter half of the 1800s, as Britain ruled India in those times, but it really became known due to its application to Mohandas Gandhi, aka "Mahatma Gandhi."