44 | Page "In the Creator's Image: A Metabiographical Study of Two Visual Biographies of Gandhi" (original) (raw)
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CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2013
For over half a century Gandhi has been one of the favored characters of a number of films – Nine hours to Rama (1963) to Gandhi, My Father (2007). Gandhian ethos, life and teachings are frequently represented in varied ways in different films. The portrayal of Gandhi in different films can be grouped into two broad categories: i. revolving around his life, percept and practice as one category and ii. involving his ideas, ideals and views either explicitly or implicitly. The first category of the films include three broad films—Gandhi (1982), The Making of the Mahatma (1996) and Gandhi My Father (2007) and the other category of the films include Nine Hours to Rama (1963- English), Jinnah (1998- English), Sardar (1993), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (2000), Hey Ram (2000), Lage Raho Munnabhai, (2006) etc. Grounded in the theory of inter-textuality through moving image method, the present study is a comparative analysis of examining the portrayal of Gandhi among the first category of three ...
The Transition of Gandhism to ‘Gandhigiri’ in Visual Narration: A Study of Gandhi and Lage Raho
2019
In the year of sesquicentennial celebration of Gandhi’s birth anniversary the researcher through this paper proposes to study the depiction of Gandhi and his teachings as portrayed in the visual narrations. Even though Gandhi is said to have watched just two films in his lifetime, but even decades after this death in the year 1948 many filmmakers are still showing great interest in Gandhi and Gandhism to build popular visual narratives. Films have been critical in their nature and approach towards Gandhi, his life and his teachings. While some filmmakers through their works have criticized the established historical information on Gandhi, some of them attempted celebrate and romanticize Gandhism in an informative way. Richard Attenborough in his 1982 release titled ‘Gandhi’ presents the freedom fighter as national figure who agitated against the powerful British with his unparallel weapon of Ahimsa and Satyagraha to attain freedom for India. Rajkumar Hirani in his 2006 release Lage ...
“Who Shot the Mahatma: Representing Gandhian Politics in Indian Comic Books”
South Asia Research, vol. 27, no. 1 (2007): 57-77. Amar Chitra Katha (‘Immortal Picture Stories’) is the leading Indian comic book series, with 440 mythological and historical titles and sales of over 86 million issues. In 1989, after twenty years of publishing success, the producers of this series decided to release two issues on the world-renowned Indian politician and activist, Mahatma Gandhi. But Gandhi, best known for his technique of non-violent civil resistance, presented a formidable challenge: How to depict the Mahatma, paragon of peace and nonviolence, in a visual medium that is notorious for its action and violence? This article examines the relationship between text and image in these comics, and draws upon interviews with authors and artists, to better understand the contested memory of Gandhi in India today as well as the contested concept of non-violence.
Gandhi's Images and Images of Gandhi: The Culture and Politics of Visual Representation
2022
There is but no question that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the pre-eminent public face of India to the rest of the world for more than three decades, shortly after his return to India from South Africa in January 1915. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that at this time he was far from being a household name in his native country, just as India in the second decade of the 1900s was not bereft of political leaders of immense stature, among them Annie Beasant, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Chittaranjan Das, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Mahadev Govind Ranade. Indeed, their names would continue to reverberate for many years thereafter: as a school-going boy in the 1960s and 1970s, I remember vividly having to memorize the contributions of the triumvirate known simply as "Lal Bal Pal." Yet, it is indisputably true that Gandhi eclipsed everyone else, and around the world, India came to be practically synonymous with his name. In India itself, as the eminent literary critic Harish Trivedi noted in a brief account of the voluminous representations of Gandhi in fiction, poetry and cinema, he held a place in the literary canon that staggers the imagination. The poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Trivedi wryly comments, "was no Gandhian," and yet felt inspired to pen 204 poems in a tribute to the Mahatma. There is also the example of another Hindi poet, Bhavaniprasad Mishra, who wrote 13 poems in 13 days following the assassination of Gandhi, and on his birth centenary in 1969, he published a collection of 500 poems on Gandhi. "It may be doubted," Trivedi unsurprisingly avers, "whether any historical and fully documented human being of our age or any other was ever acclaimed in such superhuman and indeed divine terms, especially in his own lifetime, and indeed from a relatively early stage of his life" (201). Hindi was far from being the only language, or even necessarily the principal one, in which the epic life of Gandhi was being framed even as the Mahatma was,
Portrayal of Gandhi in Popular Hindi Cinema
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, 2018
M. K. Gandhi constitutes an undeniable space of Indian landscape. Textual interpretation, along with information, concerning Gandhi has been abounded with numerous significant works in social sciences. These are the crucial signpost to comprehend Gandhi. Nonetheless, there is limit to these academic works in terms of accessibility to commoners. Another medium which can be easily accessed by commoners for knowing Gandhi is cinema. It is one of the most powerful and vital expressions in India. Cinema plays an important role in social formation. The influence of movies as agent of socialization, along with all forms of media, cannot be underestimated. It is obvious that films are one of the potent media for setting the desired agenda on masses. In India, the query as to comprehend film to understand society has been mostly ignored. In this backdrop, it becomes imperative to interrogate those spheres which so far have not been unveiled in terms of explaining the cinematic representation of Gandhi. Popular Hindi cinema is one such realm; there are numerous Hindi movies in which Gandhi appears either as a character or as an idea. In this regard, this paper proposes to disentangle the link between popular Hindi cinema and Gandhi.
Gandhi in India’s Literary and Cultural Imagination, 2022
This chapter brings together an assemblage of perspectives exploring cinematic memories premised on the enunciations of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) and Gandhian values in post-independence Hindi films. These cinematic enunciations serve as a rich archive of images to reinterpret Gandhi’s various versions and archetypes in the contemporary world. Attending to Gandhi’s uncanny presence as “psychoanalytical listening” based on the Hindi films’ interpretations, the chapter aims to explore the spectator’s ethical task in excavating and deconstructing the contents of the cinematic texts.
International Journal of Humanities & Social Science Studies (IJHSSS), 2022
In the early 20th century, the scenario of Gandhi’s Independent movement in India gradually changed. It was started following the defeat of the Non-cooperation movement and Gandhi’s six-year incarceration. Indians later realised that the “3P” strategy, or nonviolence, is not the only way to seize “Purna Swaraj” against the British rule. As a result, in 1923, Indians saw the beginning of a violent revolutionary movement. Ram Prasad Bismil founded the “Hindustan Socialist Republican Association” (HSRA) after quitting the Congress Party. The party received a lot of youth support in India within two years. Members of this party, including Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, and Sachindra Nath Sanyal, raised weapons and bombed against the British instead of engaging in 3P system. In such situation, they would be revered among the Indians if they were punished by the British government and hanged to death. M.K. Gandhi was released from prison at the same time. Due to the failure of non-violent diplomats, he had lost the support of a significant portion of Indian youth. The common rural families that fought in World War I for England on Gandhiji’s instruction refused to be deceived by his persuasive and inspiring speeches after losing dads, sons, and other family members. Following this, regionally fervent Gandhiji supporters tried to promote myths about Gandhi’s divine entity among farmers in an effort to rekindle this support. This procedure is accurately portrayed by Sahid Amim in “Gandhi as Mahatma.” However, we consistently ignore the significance of visuals in this project. Even though there was no language and no alluring words were used, such visuals let ordinary Indians see Gandhi as a holy being. In an effort to bridge the gap between the Divine being of Mahatma and Gandhi, this article has sought to offer an analytical description of major images that serve as symbols of Gandhi and Mahatma.
Gandhi: the Man and the Attenborough film
Sir Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi is the first film to have been made about the father of the Indian nation. It has taken 35 years since his death for this simple tribute to have been paid. The emphasizes the decline of Gandhi's influence, for these years were marked by the heyday and decline of film, and the heyday (and the now foreseeable decline) of TV as it has been known -though cable TV, satellite TV and all the other marvels promised us by Mammon may not be entirely reprehensible.