Attenborough's "Gandhi"

Attenborough’s “GANDHI”

       Imaginary Homelands, it is the collection of essays. Salman Rushdie is a diaspora writer. He considered for his bitter satirical writing, especially on social, economic, and political aspects. At the beginning he was against with the government of Indira Gandhi and that matter clearly visible in his famous work- “The Midnight’s Children”.

     Attenborough’s “Gandhi” (1982) - epic biographical film, won eight Oscar Awards. Salman Rushdie highly considered this film with the approach of postcolonial writing. So he aroused questions like:

            Why Attenborough’s “Gandhi” film won Oscar Awards?

            What are the reasons behind this?

    First he mentioned Indian Mentality.

                                    “Deification is Indian Disease.”

      Deification is Indian habit. Indian people are believes in godly figure. It is common for India. So, if Indian calls Gandhi as a godly figure, there wasn’t needed to be doubt.   Here, Salman Rushdie came with series of questions like:

            Why are they (Western people) interested in Gandhi?

            Why are they called Gandhi as a godly figure?

            What are the reasons behind portraying Gandhi as a god in Attenborough’s film “Gandhi”?

            Why American gives the Oscar Awards to this film?

     There are some reasons giving by Salman Rushdie such as:

     Salman Rushdie has problem with this film because,

                     “Film is more hagiographical than biographical.”

    Salman Rushdie insisted that film maker not faithful to his movie. If it is so then definitely he shows the reality because in this movie some important parts are missed out. For example-

  In the history, there wasn’t only Gandhi instead of this there were various rebellion leaders like:

                   Bhagat Singh

                  Subhash Chandra

                Chandra Sekhar Ajad

                Ambedkara, etc.

                      Why are they not show in the film?

       Due to these reasons movie became “art for the sake of are”. The “Dramatic interest” totally lost into this film because if Gandhi was such a nice and good character then why is he not equally good to his family, to his son. Why Gandhi v/s Gandhi happened.

      Salman Rushdie suggests that Gandhi was not good character but he was a crafty Gujarati lawyer. Gandhi believed in rural life while Nehru believed in industrialization. So, by heart we are Gandhi but on the level of globalization we are just like Nehru.

      In short, art came with proper weightage. This movie is just like fiction. This essay end with this sentence-

                     “God help film industry”.