For Gandhi, cinema was always sinful

He never came around to accepting it as art, but that did not stop filmmakers from idolising him, says the author of a new book

A new book explores Gandhi’s adversarial approach to cinema, which he considered evil and morally corrupting.

Titled Mahatma Gandhi in Cinema, it is also an attempt to explore how ‘the tallest leader of the Indian freedom struggle’ lives in Hindi cinema.

The author, Dr Narendra Kaushik, analyses 100 years of Bollywood history (1913–2013), and finds Gandhi a major if sometimes dormant presence. He spoke to Showtime about the book.

You have described how Gandhi thought of cinema as ‘sinful technology.’ He clubbed it with gambling, smoking and drinking. Did he ever come around to changing his view and accepting cinema as a form comparable to writing?

Unfortunately for filmmakers, Gandhi never came around to accepting cinema as art. This is quite an irony as he evolved when it came to ideas on the caste system, inter-dining, inter-caste marriage, caste vocations and even violence. According to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Gandhi even developed a soft corner for Subhas Chandra Bose and believed he would succeed in liberating India. Gandhi published seven newspapers in his life, but remained steadfast in his opposition to cinema. He believed cinema with its half-clad heroines could vitiate the minds of the young. He did not even like newspapers, particularly foreign ones, which, according to him, ‘displayed obscene photographs of actors and actresses… by way of advertisement’. A great proponent and practitioner of celibacy, the Mahatma believed that cinema could break a person’s vow of self-control.

The industry was nevertheless enamoured of Gandhi, and made several films from Dharti ke Laal (1946) to Hey Ram (2000) and Lage Raho Munnabhai (2006). Do you see a broad pattern to how Hindi cinema has portrayed him and his ideas?

Yes, there is a pattern. Before the 1960s, the industry produced a large number of films inspired by his ideals of truth, non-violence, abolition of untouchability, equality of religions, village-based economy, opposition to machines, and swadeshi industry. But he exited after the entry of superstar Rajesh Khanna and his age of romance in late the ‘60s. He remained out in the cold during the heyday of ‘angry young man’ Amitabh Bachchan. During this period, whatever films were made on his ideals came from the so-called parallel cinema. Films like Manthan, Ankur, and Train to Pakistan were made by torchbearers of art cinema. Even films like Swades, Jaag Utha Insaan, Gandhi, Hey Ram and Lagaan carried the stamp of realistic cinema.

He got resurrected in Bollywood after Lage Raho Munnabhai hit the marquee in 2006. A large number of films were announced with Gandhi as the subject. But most of them got canned and the honeymoon proved short-lived.

How does Gandhi come across in the films in which he appears as a cameo in relation to subjects such as Subhas Chandra Bose and Savarkar?

They are not very flattering. In films like Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and The Legend of Bhagat Singh he is portrayed in a negative light. Vijay Anand, the then Chairman of CBFC, had defended cuts in Rajkumar Santoshi’s film on Bhagat Singh, saying “Gandhi’s portrayal is very weak. He does not even hold his head high.” In Savarkar, he appears in just a couple of scenes while in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero, he appears fallible, helpless and weak, which is far removed from reality. The fact is that despite having major differences with Netaji on violent resistance, Gandhi never had differences of heart with him.

Do you think the film industry will continue to mine Gandhi lore when contentious heroes such as Savarkar are being promoted?

Gandhi is much-much bigger than Savarkar and will always be relevant. He belongs to the world as much as he belongs to India. Bollywood, fortunately, is quite independent. It is not guided by dominant political thought. We have not even produced a complete biopic on Gandhi yet. Attenborough’s Gandhi was about his political struggle while Shyam Benegal’s Making of the Mahatma dealt with his South Africa sojourn.

Journalist-academic

Dr Narendra Kaushik was fascinated by Gandhi after reading his autobiography ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’. In 2013, he researched Gandhi and cinema for four years for a doctoral thesis. Writing and rewriting the book took him a year more. Kaushik was a journalist before getting into academics in 2017. He has worked with the Free Press Journal, Mumbai Mirror, Mid Day, Asia360News, and Bangkok Post.