Throughout our childhood, my sisters and I could not help but see an imposing statue of Gandhi in our living room. My mother had bought it from a Thaipusam fair to remind her kids to be a person who brings glory to family and nation. At that tender impressionable age, we took in all my mother's Gandhi stories of his tenacity and eloquence. We were reminded of his vow to his mother to stay vegetarian upon boarding the steamship to England, the land of beef eaters and gin. And staying true to his word, he allegedly stayed vegan, this Mahatma (great soul).
Alas, when we grew, one by one, the onion peeled skin by skin to reveal that perhaps the story is more layered than it was thought to be. Probably the one thing that Gandhi managed to do in this land with hundreds of languages, scripts and personalities is to be a unifying icon. Under the excellent strategy of 'divide and rule' by the tyrannical British, he led the nation under one banner for the first time. This process, however, was marred by many incidences that seemed to favour one particular set of social and selected leaders.
Gandhi seems to go all out to appease the Muslim minority in the eye of the majority. He helped to start the Khalifat movement in India in solidarity with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He fasted whenever riots broke out without ever condemning the actions of rabble-rousers, especially when they involved Muslims. In retrospect, his non-violence stance of opposing is said to have delayed independence by decades. In the end, it was the stern rebuttal by the Indian National Army (INA) and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy that did the trick. By all accounts, Gandhi did not want India to be an independent nation. He wanted India to be a British Dominion, much like Australia and Canada, with the British monarch as the Head. The British, of course, were not keen to treat the brown-skinned subjects as equals.
Gandhi's actions (or inactions) are solely blamed for the Partition of the country and all its miseries and heartbreaks. Gandhi's extra-political activities also raised eyebrows. His experimentations with celibacy would be considered criminal in this age and time.
Still, my Amma thinks she had done the correct thing in that Thaipusam fair when she purchased that Gandhi statue. She still thinks it must have inspired us. By the by, she also bought a Nehru figurine to complement Gandhi. Of course, she does not know of Nehru's tryst, not with destiny, but also with Lady Edwina Mountbatten. Let her have her peace.
This 1963 Hollywood production narrates the nine hours that passed between Godse reaching Delhi railway station and Gandhi collapsing after a gunshot in the compounds of Birla House, sighing 'Hey Ram'. It used a predominantly brown-faced white cast with a smattering of local crew.
It took the liberty to fictionalise Godse. He turned against Gandhi after being rejected by the British Army for being a Brahmin. He blamed Gandhi for his father's and wife's death. They both died in racial riots. In real life, Godse never married. Here he was married off to a child bride, fell in love with a married socialite and engaged with prostitutes.
P.S. There is a 2022 Telegu film with the name Godse. It has nothing to do with Nathuram Godse and Gandhi's assassination. Here, a prosperous Indian American industrialist decides to pay back to the country he grew up. He decides to invest in India. He soon realises that the memorandums signed to start industries do not actually go towards the betterment of India but are circulated amongst the inner circles of politicians. Like Godse, who went against a system that carved up his Bharat Mata, in this film, Visvanath, goes on a crusade to expose the corrupt political system.
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