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Mahatma Gandhi Vs Attenborough’s “gandhi”

Attenborough’s magnificent film "Gandhi" has been one of the most popular movies in the world for nearly half a century, and a great source of information about the mahatma (“great soul”) who invented nonviolent, win-win politics and who

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    Gandhi vs   Attenborough’s Gandhi   by  Mark Lindley and Kusum Chadda201?    Introduction  Sir Richard Attenborough’s magnificent film Gandhi has been one of the most popular movies in the worldfor nearly half a century. It is also a great source of information about the mahatma (“great soul”) who inventednonviolent, win-win politics and who used that technique to remove the biggest colony from the biggest empirein history. But there is a lot of poetic license in the way the movie treats history, and even if it were twice aslong—six hours instead of three—it would still have to leave out a lot of fascinating information that is knownabout Gandhi.The following statement appears on the screen after the opening titles: “No man’s life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight, toinclude each event, each person who helped to shape a lifetime. What can be done is to be faithful in spirit to therecord and try to find one’s way to the heart of the man.” Here, the phrase “faithful in spirit” hides the fact that the film depicts a lot of things which, historically speak-ing, never happened. But since the real history of Gandhi’s achievement is important—is in some ways relevantto the present and future and not just a rousing tale from the past—this book will treat Attenborough’s greatfilm as a platform from which to build up an understanding of what historians (and journalists back in Gandhi’sday) have said “really happened.” That is not always a simple matter, because different historians sometimesgive different accounts. But still, sorting out fact from fiction is worthwhile to people who want to go beyondthe beautiful myths.When it comes down to microscopic detail, there are so many differences between the complicated historicalfacts and what is depicted in the movie that to try to describe all the differences would be boring and exhaust-ing. So we will just point out some of the bigger differences and enough of the little ones (especially those thatare easy to describe) to give a sense of the fact that this wonderful movie is not  a history textbook. We will alsocall attention to some of the brilliant ways in which the film is faithful to history. And for fun we will mention  some places where John Briley’s script was cut or changed during the filming. The cuts tightened up the paceby eliminating some of the historical information that he had wanted to weave into the dialogue.Our numbering of the scenes is derived from the 28 cues in the DVD version. If we underline someone’sname, a biographical sketch of that person is given in the Appendix. Scene 1 a : The assassination (30 January 1948)   This happened on the grounds of the New Delhi residence of a very rich industrialist, G.   D. Birla, who was an oldfriend of Gandhi’s. They had first met back in 1916, when Birla was 22 and Gandhi nearly twice as old.Gandhi often spoke of an ideal kind of “trusteeship” whereby the rich would live modestly and would managetheir wealth for the benefit of the poor. The first time he is known to have written about this idea was in a letter toBirla in 1925. And, on the morning of the day that Gandhi was assassinated, he told an American journalist,Margaret Bourke-White, that even though he knew of no one who really lived up to his ideal of trusteeship, hethought Birla was one of the few who was “trying” to do it. He said, “I fondly hope they don’t deceive me. If I foundout Birla deceives me, I would not be here under his roof.”In his recent visits to New Delhi, Gandhi had stayed in a slum in order to express a sense of unity with the poor.But that part of town was now a cauldron of bitter refugees from Pakistan, so this time he put up at Birla’s houseinstead. Birla had contributed a lot of money to some of Gandhi’s projects, and he told Bourke-White that Gandhi’sconcept of trusteeship had influenced him to some extent: “I live more for service than the accumulation of wealth.…I think this becomes much too personal, Miss Bourke-White.” She was not impressed.The assassin, whose face is depicted close-up at the outset, was a pious Hindu fanatic named Godse. Two accom-plices are depicted in this scene: (1) a bearded old man, sitting in a canvas-covered rickshaw, who nods to him, and (2) a younger man who then follows him part of the way. The old man represents implicitly the assassins’ mentor,V.   D. Savarkar (who in reality did not accompany them to New Delhi). Savarkar and Gandhi had known each othersince 1909 when, at a meeting in London, they had agreed to disagree as to the proper relations between politics andreligion and violence.Savarkar and his disciple Godse belonged to the same caste in the same part of India. The little team of assassinshad tried to kill Gandhi with a bomb a week before Godse shot him. The killing was done by people who the police  knew wanted to assassinate Gandhi. The fanatics were able to kill him because some other people who were notfanatics didn’t really mind, and because Gandhi would rather run the risk than get police protection. Dialogue : ouse servant’s voice : He will be saying prayersin the garden. Just follow the others.  Manu : Brother, Bapu is already late for prayers. Gandhi : Oh God! Oh God! Comments :   Gandhi’s prayer meetings and his political speeches after theprayers were broadcast by radio to hundreds of millions of listeners.Manu was a grand-daughter of Gandhi’s brother.This is an English translation of Gandhi’s alleged last words.(See page @.) Scene 1 b : The funeral   The decision to have a military funeral (rather odd for a man like Gandhi!) was made jointly by Nehru, who wasthe first Prime Minister of the Republic of India, and Mountbatten, who was the last Viceroy of India as a colony andthen the first Governor-General of the Republic of India in the British Commonwealth. They wanted to assert theauthority of the new government, because they were afraid of massive chaos in the wake of the assassination. To pre-vent a fresh outbreak of religious warfare, Mountbatten had written, at the end of the announcement, of Gandhi’sdeath, “The assassin was a Hindu.”This scene includes close-ups of several characters who will figure prominently in later scenes of the movie: • The tall Indian woman with slightly unkempt hair, walking just behind the bier: Sarojini Naidu, who will be shown, inScene 18 b , leading a column of the great “Salt March” of 1930.• The stout, proud-looking man seated next to the bier (and waving when we first see him): Gandhi’s toughest politicallieutenant, Patel.• The man wearing a cap and standing near Patel but just in front of the bier: Prime Minister Nehru.• The young Englishman with a white military cap: Governor-General Mountbatten.