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Mahatma Gandhi. You can’t help but be awed by the man who won us freedom by non-violent means. Who inspired the nation to act as one and ask the British to leave the country. Before coming to India, Gandhiji had lived in South Africa for 20-odd years and had raised his voice against the Apartheid there. His writings and teachings continue to inspire millions even today. It’s but natural that filmmakers too would get inspired to make films about him. On the occasion of his birth anniversary, we present a list of films which are connected to the great man. 

Gandhi (1982)

Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth

Gandhi is a period biographical film based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi. A co-production between India and the United Kingdom, it is directed and produced by Richard Attenborough from a screenplay written by John Briley. It won major critical acclaim and was praised for its accurate portrayal of the life of Gandhi, Indian independence movement, as also for Kingsley’s superlative performance, production values and costume design. The film received eleven nominations at the 55th Academy Awards, winning eight (more than any other film nominated that year), including for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (for Kingsley). The film encapsulates vignettes from the life of the Mahatma, starting from when he is thrown off a South African train in 1893 for being in a whites-only compartment and concludes with his assassination and funeral in 1948.

The Making Of The Mahatma (1996)

Director: Shyam Benegal
Cast: Rajit Kapur, Pallavi Joshi

The Making of the Mahatma is an Indian – South African venture, directed by Shyam Benegal, about the early life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi during his 21 years in South Africa. The film is based upon the book, The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma, by Fatima Meer (who also wrote the screenplay). Gandhiji’s years as a barrister in South Africa aren’t as well-known as his later years in his homeland. It’s while fighting against the injustice there that he formed, tested and put into practice the principles of passive resistance, civil disobedience and Satyagraha. The film brings out these points admiringly well. It won the National Film Award for Best Actor for Rajit Kapur and also won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English.

Hey Ram (2000)

Director: Kamal Haasan
Cast: Kamal Haasan, Shah Rukh Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Hema Malini, Rani Mukerji

Hey Ram is a historical drama film written, directed and produced by Kamal Haasan, who also acted as the protagonist. It is an alternate history film that depicts India’s Partition and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse. The film revolves around a fictional character called Saket Ram (Kamal Haasan), who is torn apart by the violence of the Partition and holds Gandhiji responsible for it. He plots to kill the Mahatma but later circumstances force him to change his mind. He later leads his life according to Gandhian principles.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006)

Director: Raju Hirani
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Vidya Balan, Boman Irani

Sanjay Dutt reprised his character from the original Munnabhai but with a difference — this time the Bhai wasn’t pretending to be a doctor, but he had turned Gandhian. It was fun to see a tough-as-nails goon practising non-violence. He gave Gandhigiri a new lease on life in the process. Murli Prasad Sharma or Munna Bhai meets Mahatma Gandhi and undergoes a heart transformation. For Munna, breaking bones and abducting people at the snap of his fingers was easier than the courage it required to walk on the path of non-violence and truth. But he perseveres on the road less travelled and not only transforms himself but changes the heart of a mean builder Lucky Singh (Boman Irani) as well. Sanjay Dutt and Munnabhai are made for each other, and he couldn’t have played the role better. Without Arshad Warsi, the movie wouldn’t be half as good, and like the previous one, he’s delivered. Vidya Balan really adds life to the movie. Mahatma Gandhi, played by Dilip Prabhavalkar is something you will not forget.

Gandhi My Father (2007)

Director: Feroz Abbas Khan
Cast: Darshan Jariwala, Akshaye Khanna, Bhumika Chawla, Shefali Shah

The movie is based upon the biography of Harilal Gandhi, titled Harilal Gandhi: A Life by Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal. Khan’s play, Mahatma vs. Gandhi, had a similar theme and was based on a novel by Gujarati author Dinkar Joshi. The movie was shot on actual locations in South Africa, as well as in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The film deals with the life of Gandhiji’s eldest son Harilal. He had to live under the shadow of his illustrious father and wasn’t able to come to grips with it. He had a huge difference of opinion with Gandhiji and as a result, suffered most of his life. Darshan Jariwala was terrific as Gandhiji and so was Shefali Shah as Kasturba. And Akshaye Khanna perhaps gave the performance of his life playing the wayward Harilal.

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Few historical figures have proven as difficult to capture on screen as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a man who spun thread, fasted for peace and somehow became the moral conscience of a nation twice over, once in life, and again every time an actor has dared to play him. Indian and international cinema has circled him for over four decades now, sometimes reverently, sometimes combatively, always aware that the role comes with a weight few performances can bear. This Gandhi Jayanti, here are eight films worth revisiting, each offering a different lens on the man the world calls Bapu.

Gandhi (1982)

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Rohini Hattangadi

The film that set the template, and arguably still the one by which every other is measured. Ben Kingsley’s Academy Award-winning performance remains the definitive cinematic Gandhi for most of the world, tracing his journey from a young lawyer humiliated on a South African train to the architect of a nation’s independence. Attenborough shot it as grand historical epic, but its quietest moments, Gandhi at his spinning wheel, Gandhi in silence, land hardest.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006)

Director: Rajkumar Hirani

Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Vidya Balan, Boman Irani, Dilip Prabhavalkar

Proof that Gandhi’s philosophy could survive a Bombay gangster comedy and come out stronger for it. Dilip Prabhavalkar’s gentle, twinkly-eyed Gandhi, who appears only to a bemused Munnabhai, turned “Gandhigiri” into a cultural phenomenon and introduced an entire generation to satyagraha through laughter rather than lecture. It remains the rare film that made Gandhian thought feel contemporary.

Gandhi, My Father (2007)

Director: Feroz Abbas Khan

Cast: Darshan Jariwala, Akshaye Khanna, Shefali Shah, Bhumika Chawla

The most unflinching film on this list, because it refuses to look away from the cost of greatness. Darshan Jariwala’s Gandhi is seen entirely through the eyes of his estranged eldest son Harilal, played with aching restraint by Akshaye Khanna, a man destroyed by the impossibility of living up to his father’s legend. It is less a biopic than a tragedy, and it does not let the Mahatma off easy.

The Making of the Mahatma (1996)

Director: Shyam Benegal

Cast: Rajit Kapur, Pallavi Joshi

Before he was the Mahatma, he was simply Mohandas, a young, uncertain lawyer arriving in South Africa in 1893. Benegal’s film, an Indo-South African co-production, is the rare one that treats Gandhi’s 21 years abroad, and the racial humiliations that radicalised him, as the real origin story. Rajit Kapur plays him not as icon but as a man still becoming one.

Hey Ram (2000)

Director: Kamal Haasan

Cast: Kamal Haasan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji, Naseeruddin Shah, Vasundhara Das

The most audacious film here, and the most divisive. Kamal Haasan’s fictional protagonist is radicalised after the Partition riots and sets out to assassinate Gandhi himself, only to be transformed by a final, fateful encounter with the man he meant to kill. It is less about Gandhi than about the hatred his philosophy stood against, which perhaps makes its point more sharply than reverence ever could.

Sardar (1993)

Director: Ketan Mehta

Cast: Paresh Rawal, Annu Kapoor

Ostensibly a biopic of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, but its real power lies in how it reframes Gandhi, played here by Annu Kapoor, through the eyes of his most pragmatic lieutenant. Watching Gandhi’s idealism collide with Patel’s realism, especially over Partition and the integration of princely states, offers a sharper political portrait than most films attempt.

Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara (2005)

Director: Jahnu Barua

Cast: Anupam Kher, Urmila Matondkar

A film about Gandhi without really being about him at all. Anupam Kher plays a retired Hindi professor whose encroaching Alzheimer’s convinces him that he, not Nathuram Godse, is responsible for the Mahatma’s assassination. It is a meditation on memory, guilt and inherited national trauma, with Gandhi functioning as a ghost at the edge of every frame.

Gandhi Godse: Ek Yudh (2023)

Director: Rajkumar Santoshi

Cast: Deepak Antani, Chinmay Mandlekar

The most recent, and most contested, entry on this list. Santoshi’s film imagines an alternate history in which Gandhi survives the assassination attempt, setting up an extended ideological confrontation between Gandhi, played by veteran stage actor Deepak Antani, and his killer Nathuram Godse. It courted controversy on release for the space it gives Godse’s arguments, which makes it essential, if uneasy, viewing for anyone interested in how India continues to argue with its own history.

Eight films, eight different Gandhis: saint, father, ghost, provocation. Perhaps that is the truest tribute cinema can offer a man who never claimed to be anything more than an ordinary human attempting the extraordinary.

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