Gandhi (1982)

There's a great deal to be said about the film Gandhi, which was made in a classically epic Hollywood style that was already somewhat archaic at the time of the film's release, 1982. If it's not a particularly artistically exceptional film, it is still a film that manages the neat trick of impressing on the viewer the significance of what Gandhi did as well as the broader issues of human dignity and political oppression. Try not being moved by the scene where Gandhi's followers march up to the salt works knowing that they will be beaten or where Gandhi forgives a Muslim man who confesses that he killed a Hindu to avenge the death of his own son. Since this is History vs. Hollywood, though, I'll just limit my comments to how Gandhi works as a historical biopic. First off I should admit that Gandhi was a poor choice, since it's remarkably accurate for something out of Hollywood (save maybe for Martin Sheen's journalist character, who was fictional), at least as far as I could tell with my lack of specialization on Gandhi or twentieth century Indian history. The film even avoids the common mistake of crediting Gandhi with the bulk of the work for Indian independence; instead the filmmakers are interested in Gandhi's methods and philosophy, and how Gandhi clung to them even in violent, tense times. So it is a film I'd recommend, not just as a lover of history, but as a lover of cinema. Just ignore the irony in having Gandhi portrayed by a British man, alright?

Anyway, despite the film's overall accuracy, it does leave out some fairly important historical contexts. Given how complex the history of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement are, this is hardly something that should be faulted. And it gave me something to write about!

History vs. Gandhi

Was he, a young lawyer, really thrown off a train in South Africa?

Yes. It tends to get overlooked nowadays when we associate South Africa just with Apartheid, but by the nineteenth century South Africa became the reluctant home to large numbers of indentured laborers shipped from India, who worked in the mines and the farms and were like all poor workers from non-European countries working in English-speaking nations were generally known at the time as "coolies." Like Latin American workers in the present day United States and, really, foreign minority workers throughout history, the coolies were resented and hated for "taking" jobs the majority population usually thought themselves too privileged for anyway and were subjected to sporadic persecution by authorities even as the government maintained policies bringing more minority workers in.

In such an atmosphere, little or no distinction were made between different ethnicities of non-whites, and all were considered equally suspect. As an Indian, even dressed in expensive Western clothes and with the credentials of a lawyer, it was inevitable he would have been violently expelled from the first-class section of a train.

Hey, why is he there anyway?

It isn't really mentioned in the film, is it? It's understandable, since it's not very interesting. A trade and shipowning company owned by a Muslim in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, was fighting off a lawsuit. It was only a little later that Gandhi devoted himself to fighting for Indian rights in South Africa and his life became considerably more exciting, with beatings, inspirational speeches, and trips to prison.

What is the significance of the burning of the registration cards?

In 1906 in Transvaal, one of the provinces of South Africa, a bill called the Asiatic Act was passed, which imposed mandatory registration cards on the entire Indian population, as part of a general program of keeping Indian migrants under maximum surveilance. As an act of mass protest Gandhi encouraged Indians to publicly burn their cards, a campaign that was ultimately effective.

Did Gandhi have a falling-out with his wife over the commune's principles?

Well, naturally Gandhi was hardly without flaws and like most saints he would have been all but unbearable to live with. He could be fairly intolerant of people who failed to live up to his own ideals and clashes with his wife and others who clung to things like India's traditional caste system, especially the required shunning of the Untouchables, were freqent. In another instance, Gandhi pressured two young Indian women who lived on his commune to shear off all their hair, just because they had the audacity to flirt with a young man.

What was going on with India at the time of Gandhi's return anyway?

Since the mid-eighteenth century, the British East India Company had (through force, naturally) gained the right to control land and collect rents, practically making it a State in India. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (or, depending on who's writing about it, the First War of Independence or the Sapoy Mutiny), the British government dissolved the Company and took direct control of its territories in India. Also with the deposing of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, who by that time was the preeminent ruler of India in title only, Britain's control of the country was rhetorically cemented with Queen Victoria being declared Empress of India and with the Governor-General of India being retitled Viceroy of India.

However, Britain really did not enjoy absolute control over the entire country. There was the so-called "British Raj" with the Viceroy's government centered in Delhi, and then there were the approximately 550 Princely States, small principalities ruled by native kings who, except for the power to raise an army, theoretically had full autonomy (but with an agent of the colonial government looking over their shoulder). Like so many successful colonial rulers, the British managed to enlist these petty rulers as their collaborators. Many were afraid of losing their privileges and their scraps of power while the richer ones were content to live "Eurotrash"-esque lives in Britain or continental Europe. One of these Princely States, Porbandar, was Gandhi's childhood home, and Gandhi's grandfather and father had worked as ministers for the local king or raja.

For the majority of Indians, they found themselves second-class citizens in their own country. The number of Indians who could actually work for the civil service of their own government was limited by law. Government monopolies were harshly enforced to the detriment of native sellers and farmers; for example, an Indian could be arrested just for possessing, let alone selling, salt not obtained through government-approved sources. Poor farmers were often subjected to surf-like conditions, a process maintained if not outright supported by the British government, despite all the propaganda about safeguarding Indian liberties. So when he returned to live in India as a celebrity due to his work for the Indian population in South Africa, Gandhi had a great deal to campaign against.

Wait, Gandhi was a loyal subject of the British Empire?!

Believe it or not, but it wasn't until late in life that he lost his faith in the British Empire, something shocking to those of us who associate Gandhi with Indian nationalism. However, like much of the intellegentsia of Great Britain and India's thoroughly Anglicized professional class in the era, Gandhi at first believed that British-style imperialism was actually a force for good: it gauranteed liberty and security to peoples who had been historically oppressed by their native regimes and prepared them for the fruits of modernity and the joys of democratic liberty (of course, the time when these societies would be considered capable of total self-government and the criteria for such independence were always kept extremely vague). This is not a view that generates much sympathy nowadays, and in fact is as discredited as a political ideology can get. Today a bona fide British imperialist is about as hard to find as a diehard United States monarchist. However, as the film relates, this did not stop Gandhi from recognizing and rallying people against abuses that could be traced right back to the Viceroy's office.

What was the massacre?

In the city of Amritsar in Punjab, there were joint demonstrations by Hindus and Muslims were bubbling up, with the support of two leaders of the Indian National Congress. After a riot turned violent, the local authorities threatened martial law and banned all public meetings. When a mass meeting was held in a city square regardless, a local British officer, General Reginald Dyer, ordered his soldiers to fire on the crowd, which included children, killing 379 people and wounding 1,137. To add degrading insult to grevious injury, Dyer also issued orders that all Indians walking down a street where an English missionary had been assaulted to have to crawl on the road or be beaten, among other draconian measures such as forcing local students to go on sixteen-mile marches in hot weather and people who failed to salute any British officer were beaten. Dyer was censured and relieved of his command, but he found a sympathetic British public long accustomed to think of the Indians as savage ingrates. As the film hints, the news of the massacre and Dyer's thuggish tyranny turned not only Gandhi but various Indian leaders who still supported continued British political presence into nationalists. As Gandhi himself wrote, Dyer and authorities who sympathized with him sought to "kill the soul of a nation."

Were the salt protests as influential as the film portrays?

I think so. Gandhi organized the march to the beach at Dandi, where he and his followers would make their own salt, a simple act that was against the law as related above, and other marches to government-controlled salt works. Ostensibly it was meant to protest the onerous salt tax and the laws against native Indians manufacturing and selling their own salt, but in a broader sense it was a strike against colonial encroachments on the Indian people's rights to determine their own livelihoods and utilize their own country's resources, especially salt, which in a hot climate like India's is a necessity. The sight of unarmed, peaceful people being brutally beaten at the gates of salt works caused a sensation in the international press. While the scene where the journalist Walker reports on the incident first-hand is fictional, there was an American journalist working for Chicago's Daily News that witnessed a mass beating of the protesters and described it in graphic detail.

Was Gandhi really inspired by growing up in a community of Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus?

In its long history India has been home to a vast multitude of ethnicities and religions, but Gandhi, who came from a conservative Hindu family himself, grew up in a particularly diverse region and got to meet, learn about the beliefs, and witness the practices and rituals of Sikhs, Jains, and Muslims. Gandhi wrote about witnessing as a child discussions between various religious scholars and sages and wrote, "These many things combined to inculcate in me a toleration for all faiths." This is also certainly why, even though Gandhi was curious about Christianity and respected many of its teachings, he was also confused by its claims to spiritual exclusivity.

What was Gandhi's role in Indian independence anyway?

Ah, what a loaded question and one I'll have to duck, at least when it comes to the "So what did Gandhi and his ideas for civil disobedience do, in the long term view, for the cause of Indian independence and did he do more or less than the National Congress and other Indian leaders?" version. If we're talking in terms of direct actions, that's a little easier to answer. First, in response to the British government entering India into World War II without consulting the National Congress, Gandhi drafted the Quit India Resolution, a call for civil disobedience across the country until the British withdrew from India, although arguably all this did was result in the mass arrest of virtually all the leaders of the National Congress. However, whether or not it did eventually help clear the path toward nationhood is one of those things historians still debate over.

Whatever the overall factors, the events of World War II and the unrest in India had taught the British government that it simply could not afford a continued presence in India, especially an increasingly unwelcome one, and by August 15, 1947 an independent India was officially established.

What's the problem with Pakistan?

Even before the start of independence, the British and the National Congress leaders were discussing dividing the country along religious lines, influenced by both the Wilsonian idea of nationalism based on historical identities that had been such a smash in Europe and by the secterian paranoia that the British exploited to help maintain their rule in the first place. Pakistan, then a divided country in the east and northwest of India, was based on the Muslim-majority regions, while the rest of "old India" was designated for Hindus and Sikhs. This sparked mass migrations of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, which in turn sparked conflicts, riots, and people being forced to leave their homes. Gandhi, who opposed the creation of a separate Muslim state in the first place, urged Hindus and Sikhs to invite the Muslims that had been forced to flee to Pakistan to peacefully return and pushed for the government to keep the property of Muslim refugees safe for them instead of distributing them to Hindu and Sikh migrants from Pakistan. For his trouble Gandhi was accused of being "pro-Muslim" and even received death threats.

The sectarian violence really did cast a deep shadow over Gandhi's last years. He was distressed enough by the bloodshed to go on a fast that nearly killed him – and probably would have, if news of his self-imposed starvation hadn't actually succeeded in quelling violence in Delhi.

Who killed Gandhi and why?

Gandhi was shot by Nathuram Godse, who had conspired with Narayan Apte. Both men were Hindu extremists who hated Gandhi for what they believed was his support for Muslim appeasement; even the creation of Pakistan, which Gandhi had vehemently opposed, was blamed on him. Sadly, if there's one constant in history, it's that the lives of great peacemakers often end in violence.

Reading Material

Gandhi, A Life Chadha, Yogesh (John Wiley and Sons, 1997)

For my money, the best biography of Gandhi out there, focusing on his political, personal, and intellectual life.