It is a sheer coincidence that Attenborough’s Gandhi should have finally arrived at this stage in the nation’s life when the Indian people have woken up as seldom before in the last 35 years to the importance of moral values in public life. But it is a happy coincidence. For, no other political leader has ever in history given primacy to means over ends. If it could be said some years ago that the Mahatma belonged to another more innocent age, today his relevance cannot be overemphasised.
A Gandhi is not born every other day. Great men are at once the products of their environment and of some inexplicable personal qualities. Their alchemy is peculiar to them and cannot be repeated. But the memory of great men survives to goad and inspire others. In the Mahatma’s case, Attenborough’s Gandhi will refresh our memory. For the youth who have grown up in independent India, it will materialise the Father of the Nation.
Attenborough has been faulted on several counts, one of the main ones being that he has not been comprehensive and accurate in his treatment of the freedom struggle which the Mahatma led and indeed embodied. But Attenborough has not made a film on India’s freedom movement. It is a film on Gandhi and what a film! No one who sees it can remain untouched by the grandeur of the enterprise.
I have seen the film as millions of others have in India and elsewhere and have recorded my impressions. My Mahatma is not Attenborough’s Gandhi. Indeed, there were many Gandhis in that frail but awe-inspiring frame.
Gandhi in real life moved and Inspired.
Gandhi on the screen overawes and overwhelms.
Yet it cannot be said that Attenborough has drawn him larger than life.
Gandhi was larger than life in real life.
Gandhi wrought a miracle in the shape of India’s independence through non-violent means,
Gandhi himself was a miracle.
His biographers have offered no clue to this miracle.
Neither has Attenborough.
There are no clues to such miracles;
Like the natural phenomena, they just happen;
Gandhi just happened.
We can try to get hold of the ingredients by way of his ancestry, his upbringing, his education, his experience in South Africa.
We cannot discover the alchemy.
Attenborough, to his credit, does not try.
His Gandhi arrives on the scene almost fully formed.
His first action when he refuses to leave the compartment on the train to Johannesburg sums up the man the world would gradually come to respect and admire.
This Gandhi still wore Western suits and, on a surface view, spoke the language of a British- trained barrister completely unaware of the harsh realities of racist South Africa.
But the later Gandhi – firm in his conviction, fixed in his determination, sure of his method in respect of both its superior morality and its efficacy for achieving his short-term (equality) and long-term (a just and civilized society) goal, was already discernible.
Gandhi was cast and not cast in a human mould. He was at once so human in his treatment of the others and so Olympian, almost God-like, in the pursuit of his objectives.
Attenborough has brought out the two Gandhis remarkably well.
The glint of the rapier is visible behind the twinkle in the eyes, the broad smile and the meek look of the half-naked fakir.
Gandhi’s approach was too novel to be persuasive. He led – as all great leaders lead – by the force of his personality which, like a hurricane, swept everything before it. It is difficult to think of a comparable figure in Indian history.
Strangely enough, Attenborough’s Gandhi is more persuasive. “An eye for an eye will blind the whole world.” How well this sums up the Mahatma’s philosophy and how simply!
Some Westerners like Romain Rolland, perhaps unconsciously waiting for the Second Coming as promised in the Bible, saw another Christ in him.
Attenborough’s Gandhi lives up to this prescription. A shepherd to his people but an imperious one who has no doubt about the validity of his mission or his chosen means.
No one saw the Mohammad-like figure behind the likeness of Christ – resolute, unshakable from his purpose and path, resourceful, as willing to retreat as he was determined to advance. So obvious was the influence of Hinduism and Jainism on the Mahatma that no one has explored the impact of Islam on him.
Attenborough does not do it either. But, of course, Attenborough is not a research scholar.
The purpose of Gandhi’s prophecy was not to preach a new faith. That would have been quite alien to the Sanatanist Hindu in him. His mission was to devise an instrument which the humble could use to enforce justice on their oppressors. And no one can deny he succeeded remarkably.
Attenborough’s Gandhi brings that out eloquently. In fact, as the film proceeds, one begins to wonder whether the Mahatma’s central purpose was India’s independence, or whether he chose India as the scene for his battle against adharma (evil) because he happened to be an Indian and instinctively realised that he could fight best in a terrain familiar to him.
Attenborough may or may not have read Prof. RC Zaehner’s “The Return Of Yudhishtira” in his book Hinduism. But the film makes the comparison seem wholly apt.
More important to Gandhi than independence was Hindu-Muslim unity.
Attenborough’s Gandhi brings it out poignantly. India’s “tryst with destiny” on August 15, 1947, is overshadowed by the Mahatma’s final struggle to quench the fires of communal frenzy and hatred with his own life.
The British would not recognise this truth before it was too late, perhaps because it did not suit them. Jinnah’s distrust and perhaps hatred of Gandhi was too deep to permit him to see Gandhi in a proper perspective. Or perhaps he too embodied a destiny all the same.
Attenborough has been casual in his treatment of Jinnah, perhaps unavoidably so.
The same is true of his treatment of the stalwarts of the freedom movement – Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Maulana Azad.
They owed a lot to the Mahatma. They could not have, on their own, fashioned a freedom movement of the proportion Gandhiji created. They knew it and he knew it. That was one reason why despite sharp differences they finally deferred to him. But they were big men by any reckoning. Attenborough could have shown greater sympathy for them.
And Subhas Bose, the only Congress leader to have challenged the Mahatma effectively, even if briefly, does not figure in the film at all.
These are doubtless minor blemishes in a great enterprise. But they are blemishes all the same and they could have easily been avoided.
An irreconcilable contradiction lay at the heart of the epic Gandhi enacted.
While he sought for himself calm detachment even amidst frantic activity in the Indian yogi-sanyasi tradition, as a modern political activist he roused the people to a pitch where they became difficult to control.
He preached non-violence but unleashed forces which were bound to turn violent.
He could not help it if he had to be true to himself. His search for truth had to lead him to seek control over himself and his total commitment to justice left him no choice but to rouse the people.
Except the Sikh gurus, no Indian sant has ever sought to combine these two roles. And the Sikh gurus created a full-fledged faith which could hopefully help bridge the gap between the precepts of the yogi and the action of the commissar.
It is difficult to say whether Attenborough was aware of this conflict in Gandhi and all he sought to achieve. But he has brought it out as perhaps no biographer of the Mahatma has done. Pictures are more eloquent than words.
Gandhi was unique in Indian history. That was at once his triumph and his tragedy. Attenborough heavily underscores this duality.
The Times of India, 30 January 1983