Lost Gandhian India: Notes on ‘Gandhi Godse – Ek Yudh’

What if Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had not been murdered in 1948? Would he have become the head of the state, the prime minister of an independent Republic of India? This would have been extremely unlikely, as throughout his political life Gandhi preferred not be the official leader of any entity. But would he just step down from politics and choose hermitage, seeing that the country was in many ways going in a different direction than the one he had envisaged? That is very unlikely, too. 

Historically, Gandhi, the politician who was one of the leaders of India’s independence movement, lived to see barely a few months of his country’s freedom. India proclaimed its independence from British rule on August 15, 1947, and Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu radical, Nathuram Godse, on January 30, 1948. 

A recent Hindi movie, “Gandhi Godse – Ek Yudh,” is an interesting instance of how to debate history but also, unfortunately, an example of how not to make a film. The idea for the story is in certain way ambitious and even risky in Indian political circumstances. It imagines an alternate history in which Gandhi was saved from his death by surgeons, and continued to live independent India.

Gandhi has been a hero of many films and books in India. There is even a film centered around the letters that Gandhi wrote to Hitler during World War II, asking him for peace. Moreover, even the idea of resurrecting Gandhi’s spirit – in order to resurrect Gandhian ideology – is not that rare in Indian discourse, including show business. One of the Hindi movies of the past, “Lage Raho Munna Bhai,” imagined Gandhi’s ghost visiting a petty gangster to teach him the ideology of non-violence. Even one of the essays I read in my college Hindi textbook discussed what Gandhi would have said and done had he lived in today’s India.

But “Gandhi Godse – Ek Yudh” risks more by jumping head first into the whirlpools of modern political debates. The fictional account sees Gandhi pardon his would-be assassin, the Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse. Gandhi then decides to spend time with Godse to discuss their conflicted ideologies. 

Did the film take a cue from the real history of interactions between Pope John Paul II and Ali Agca? Not necessarily. It can be plausibly argued that knowing his personality, Gandhi would have indeed tried to talk to Godse had he not been murdered by him.

Before watching the movie I feared that we would get a sermon, a cinematic pean of praise to Gandhi, rather than a more nuanced discussion on history. Those concerns, I must admit, have been only partially proven true. Yes, Gandhi is a true protagonist here and the camera, the music, and everything around this hero seems to convince us that he was nearly always right. This made a great many scenes too straightforward and predictable. However, closer to the end of the story we see Gandhi countered in such a way that he must admit to at least certain mistakes. The other strong part of the film is the number of facts that are thrown around to discuss the Mahatma’s views, which include strong accusations against him that were, indeed, raised in history. The problem with this format, however, is that this feels more like reading a historical essay, not watching a movie.

There are two battlelines of worldviews drawn here. One is between peace-loving Gandhi with his vision of tolerant India that would be open to all religious communities and the extremist Godse, who dreams of a Hindu nation. In this case, the historical Republic of India went much more toward Gandhi’s vision, especially in the spirit of the law. When it comes to practice, as we know, following such ideas turned out to be much more challenging. But there is another frontline here too: between Gandhi, who was also skeptical about technological progress and envisaged self-sufficient villages as the cornerstone of India’ life, and the centralizing, socialist, pro-industrial government of independent India. 

There is a scene in the movie when a forest is being cut on the order of government officials to build a road and a power plant and the work is halted by protesting villagers led by Gandhi. This, among other fictional instances of his disobedience in the movie, leads the Indian government to send Gandhi to jail. And who knows, maybe all of this would have indeed happened.

The real Gandhi, one of the most influential persons in India, was not present during some of the most formative years of the nascent republic: He died before the work on the constitution was completed. Many of the changes the country went through after his death would have not been to his liking. The first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a socialist and an atheist. Gandhi was a firm believer. Nehru believed in industrial, central-planned progress; Gandhi was concerned about rising materialism and focusing on technological progress at the expanse of the spiritual. For Nehru, dams and power plants were temples of modern India; Gandhi preferred the old temples. Thus, while Gandhi and Nehru had been companions and friends during the independence movement, their visions for independent India were poles apart.

And it was the Nehruvian idea of India that triumphed in many ways. In one of the film’s scenes, which takes place in the woods, a government official tells Gandhi that without building power plants (in place of the jungles), there will be no progress. In response, the Mahatma does not even repeat the word “progress.” He instead points out that for the village dwellers, nature is sacred, she is a deity. 

As nice – and ecological – as these words may sound, would they have really worked? Can we really imagine the post-independence India not investing in power plants and dams? As long as the British ruled India, the technological balance was immensely skewed; most of the heavy industry was located in Great Britain. The post-1947 India thus tried to catch up with the world’s industrial growth, and I believe the government would have charted this path with or without Gandhi.

In today’s India, Gandhi remains much more of a symbol than a role model. More movies are made about him than about any other Indian politician. Streets are named after him, his statues abound as well, and nearly every banknote carries his image (which he would certainly not like). Many of his core ideas are not followed: they are much more talked about than implemented. When it comes to ideas of inter-religious harmony, the legal spirit of Republic of India is more Gandhian than not, but when it comes to areas such as economy and technology, the idea of Gandhian India is long gone.