Salman Rushdie’s views on Attenborough’s Gandhi

Salman Rushdie’s views on Attenborough’s Gandhi

Introduction:

 Imaginary Homelands is the essay which this collection takes its title was Salman Rushdie’s contribution to a seminar about Indian writing in English held in London during the festival of India in 1982. It is a collection of Rushdie’s essays, seminar papers, articles, reviews.     

          Salman Rushdie is an Indian writer and also a diasporic writer. He is from India and now he is living in London. There are some special characteristics of diasporic writings. Diasporic writer is someone who is away from his/her homeland and write about his/her homeland. So when diasporic writer is writing something, it differs in a way. In writers mind there is love for motherland and at the same time hate as well. So there is always conflict goes on within him.

            In Imaginary Homeland there are 70 pieces divided into 12 sections. The first three parts of Imaginary Homelands gather Rushdie’s thoughts on what he calls “Sub Continental” matters from the assignation of Indira Gandhi to the work of novelist Anita Desai, a particularly representative essay, “Common Wealth does not exit” angrily rejects the marginalization of   non British writers of English. Section-4 contains Rushdie’s response to T.V and movie subjects, such as Indian director Stayjit Ray and Richard Attenborough’s Oscar winning “Gandhi”. Section-5 examines a frequent unhide concern, the condition of third world migrates in Britain and Section-6 focuses on British politics. The next five parts reprint Rushdie’s reviews of boos by authors from around the world and the finale five pieces should be linked to ‘Satanic Verses Crisis’. Rushdie remarks hopefully in his preface that,

“Reason is slowly replacing anger at the center of the debate”.

Attenborough’s Gandhi:

“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures

   at other times that we fall between two stools”

          In the essay ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’ in which Salman Rushdie talks about the movie ‘Gandhi’. As I have mentioned before that section- 4 contains Rushdie’s responses to TV and movie subjects, so here we talk about it in detail.

           The essay starts with the word ‘Deification’, and Rushdie further said that deification is an Indian disease, as Attenborough might now about it and he has construct Gandhi as a ‘Mahatma’, as it is Indian disease to say that ‘Avatar’ will come and do something good for human being and they makes a human as a ‘Avatar’ and console their human self and depend over avatar and Attenborough has do it in the movie. But he has not described. ‘Gandhi-a gift human’ and Attenborough knows that what Indian like and for what Oscar-Nobel committee would be like and for that he has just put the image of Gandhi as a Mahatma and has avoided Nathuram Godse’s speech, ploticalthriller also absent in the movie.

           He also gives the three broad headings.

1.     Spiritualism

2.     Simplicity

3.     Change anything, Submit yourself

  Here we can also say that Spiritual idea is good in only in idea, thinking not in practical.

            At Attenborough’s didn’t include speech of Nathuram Godse’s because he knows that, no one like to watch or listen Nathuram Godse as he has killed ‘Mahatma’ in that case Nathuram is a villain and if he has included this portion into movie than movie might not be selected as a Oscar winning movie. Here we can say that Richard Attenborough has chosen the events, in the movie. Which is distorted the history.         

           The Reason say Salman Rushdie might be viewing Gandhi as a spiritual mystical person. He view that when he saw this movie that time he found that Attenborough unfortunately saw the image of Gandhi as a Christ and comparison with Christ. In Christianity we can see that how the Jew people killed the Christ and Attenborough also tried to saw these things in different way. And we can say that Gandhi is a spiritual person.

                   Here we can also see that how Attenborough saw the image and represent the image of Gandhi as a submission, self-sacrifice, and non-violence image. Gandhi believes in these things and he follows these things in his whole life. And here Attenborough saw these things very well and describe beautifully. 

           We have mindset that ‘Gandhi’ movie made in western is must be good. A movie gathered applause for this reason that a western has made the movie on Gandhi and also the character of Gandhi played by the western man Ben Kingsley. So it for must be selected for the Oscar. People don’t like to criticize over through the movie has lots of mistake but it is our mindset that movie must be good as it was made in western, but Rushdie was in against of it and he has criticize the movie.

Rushdie asks:

“Why American academy wish to help by offering in a temple eight glittering statuettes to a film?”

Ø The exotic impulse to see India as the Fountain to spiritual plastically wisdom.

Ø The Christian longing for a leader’s dedicated to ideals for poverty and simplicity.

Ø A political desire that revolutions should be made purely by non-violence alone.

Rushdie criticizes the Amritsar massacre Dyer’s action at Jallianwala Bagh.

           We can say that Amritsar massacre is perhaps the most powerful sequence in the film. Both the massacre and the subsequent court-martial at which outraged Englishman question the unrepentant Dyer with basely suppressed horror are staged accurately and with passion. In this Dyer represents the cruel itself. The crowd sent him for the killing. But Dyer this two scenes mean is that Dyer’s actions at the Jallianwala Bagh where those of a cruel over jealous individual and that they were immediately condemned by Anglo-Indian.

          The court martial may have condemns Dyer but the colonist did not. He had taught the wags a lesson he was a hero. And when he returned to England he was given a heroic welcome. An appeal fund launch on his behalf made him a rich man. Tagore discussed by the British reaction to the massacre return his knighthood.

          In the case of Amritsar, artistic selection has altered the meaning of the event. It is an unforgivable distortion.

           Another example: the assassination of Gandhi. Attenborough considers it important enough to place it at the as well as the end of his film; but during the intervening three hours, he tells us nothing about it. Not the assassin’s name. Not the name of the organization behind the killing. Not the ghost of a motive for the deed. In political thriller, this would be merely crass; in Gandhi it is something worse.

           We all know that Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse, a member of the Hindu-fanatic RSS, who blamed the Mahatma for Partition of India. But in the film the killer is not differentiated from the crowd; he simply step out the crowd with a gun. This could mean one of three things: that he represents the crowd-that the people turned against Gandhi that the mob threw up a killer who did its work; that Godse was ‘one lone nut’, albeit a lone nut under the influence of a sinister–looking sadhu in a rickshaw; or that Gandhi is Christ in a loincloth. We know why Christ died he died that others might live. But Godse was no representative of the crowd. He did not work alone. And the killing was a political, not a mystical, act. Attenborough’s distortions mythologize, but they also lie.           

          Rushdie says that British have been mingling Indian history for centuries. Much of debate has been done about this movie that why Subhas Chandra Bose? Why not Tagore? Why not Nehru? The answer is the centre is important for any artistic work because that creates a well designed story.

          The film is a biography not a political work. Even if one accepts this distinction one must reply that a biography if it is not to turn into hagiography must tackle the awkward aspects of the subjects as well as the lovable side. The Bramcharya experiments during which Gandhi would live with young naked woman all night to taste his will to abstain are well known not without filmic possibilities and they are of course ambiguous events. The film omits them. It also omits Gandhi’s fondness for Indian billionaire industrialist so.

          This is a rich area for a biographer to mine the man of the masses, dedicated to the simple life, self-denial, asceticism, who was finance all his life by super capitalist patrons, and some would say hopelessly a compromise by them. a written biography, which failed to enter such murky water would not be worth reading we should not be less critical of a film.

          In the movie Godse was not representative of the Mob because he was not alone in his war the awkward aspects are there in the movie. The movie also omits Gandhi’s fondness for Indian billionaire industrialists. He died in Birla house in Delhi. Gandhi also represents the portrayal of most of leader who struggle for the independence. Sardar Patel is a hardworking man where he is like a clown here, Jinnah is portrayed as a count Dracula and we can see the most important change in the personality of Nehru.

          Nehru was not Gandhi’s disciple. There debate was central to the freedom movement-Nehru, the urban sophisticate who wanted to industrialize India, to bring it into modern age versus rural handicraft loving. And keep India in the modern age to increase industrialism. Sometime medieval figure of Gandhi: the country lived this debate, and it had to choose. In this film, Nehru becomes acolyte of Gandhi. Here Bose was evident. He improved the movie. The message of Gandhi was to fight against oppressors without weapon, without violence but it was all non-sense. The leader in India did succeed because they were moral then British. The British were smarter, craftier, better fighting politicians then their opponents. Gandhi shows as a saint who vanquished an Empire. This is a fiction.

           Rushdie says that it in a satirized manner that it was better film of 1983, according to hidden agenda Oscar sididh committee and god help the film industry. It was expensive movie.  Thus Rushdie gives his views about Attenborough’s Gandhi and at the end he significantly said that,

“What it is an incredibly expensive movie about a man who was dedicated to the small scale and to asceticism”.

Conclusion:

         A Few words more, we can say that Salman Rushdie has written an article about “Attenborough’s Gandhi” in which he has indicated about Gandhi and also made criticism on him. He didn’t write only good things about but also wrote and made mockery on him. He writes also about Nathuram Godse and told that he was right according to him and Gandhiji was also right at his place. Therefore Rushdie has given his views about Gandhi in this essay.