It is one of the biggest ironies of world history that a film made in the name of a man who detested movies had won eight Oscars. Even a cinema legend like David Lean was keen to make a biopic on him.
But, as archivist Prakash Magdum documents in his book ‘The Mahatma on Celluloid: A Cinematic Biography’, the cinema-hater Mahatma had even weirder connection with Indian films. “Mahatma Gandhi never liked films but he ended up as one of the most filmed personalities in the world,” said Magdum a Manorama Hortus on Saturday, November. He was in conversation with journalist Nandini Ramnath on the subject ‘Gandhi on Celluloid’.
“The evolution of the Indian motion picture industry ran parallel to Gandhi’s political career in India,” Magdum said. “He comes back to India from South Africa in January, 1915. And India’s first full-length feature film, Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harischandra, was made in 1913,” Magdum said.
The connection extends to censorship.
The first film that was banned by Indian censors was Bhakth Vidur, a 1921 silent Indian film directed by Kanjibhai Rathod and made under Kohinoor Film Company banner. “Bhakt Vidur’s character is entirely modelled on Gandhiji’s persona. Vidur wears khadi, and he always speaks truth. The British censors saw through it,” Magdum said.
Censorship as a system had begun in 1920, and this early 1921 film that cocked a snook at the British by creating a Gandhi surrogate was its first victim.
Magdum argued that the social films that came later were also inspired by the values espoused by Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps the most stunning connection took place when silent films made way for talkies.
The first Indian talkie, the fantasy film Alam Ara made by Ardeshir Irani, was released in March 1931. “Just few days later, a crew from the biggest movie company in America, Fox Movietone travelled all the way to a village in Gujarat and convinced Gandhi to sit for an interview.
“Such was the man’s hold on popular imagination that a foreign studio was compelled to come to India and employ its new technology on perhaps the most popular man of the time,” Magdum said. “The day after the interview was done, New York Times reported it as a major victory of the film industry because a person like Gandhi who has a saint-like personality agreed to sit for an interview,” he added.
It is not as if Gandhi cared for the camera. “He never posed for the camera. For him it was as if the camera never existed. In all the news reels that I had accessed, there was not a single moment in any of them where he looks into the camera,” Magdum said.
Being a shrewd man with a message to spread, he understood the power of a medium he detested. So he allowed the movie camera into his life but on two conditions. One, it has to be non-intrusive; it should not disturb what he was doing. And two, the flash bulb should be avoided.
In all the news reels Magdum had seen Gandhi goes about his work unmindful and undisturbed, except one. This was the one filmed by Fox Movietone. This eight-minute reel is the only one in which he talks, he allows his routine to be disturbed.
“It was possible because the journalist, James Mills of the Associated Press, had somehow developed a very good rapport with Gandhi. There was a level of trust with Mills,” Magdum said.
Even in this interview he is himself. “Not for a moment he looks at the camera. And he is topless, there is not a single cloth on his upper body,” the writer said.
It was the same Mills who had captured some very personal moments of Gandhi – him having a shave, and looking through binoculars – on the ship to England for the Second Round Table Conference in 1931.
These reels made Gandhi a global superstar. To understand the global appeal of Gandhi, amplified by these movie reels, Magdum spoke of an incident that involved the then Italian foreign minister who had a name that sounded like Gandhi’s, Grandi (Dino Grandi). The Grandi incident is also an indication of Gandhi’s popularity in the USA, a country he had never visited.
When Grandi arrived in New York harbour he was overwhelmed to see a massive crowd waiting to welcome him. “Grandi was amused. Why was there such a crowd to welcome an Italian foreign minister, he wondered,” Magdum said. That evening he got his answer. “In the evening newspaper, he read that they mistook him for Mahatma Gandhi,” Magdum said.
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