The 1982 movie, Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Ben Kingsley in the title role, won 9 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography.
As indicated in the brief biography assigned for reading, Gandhi spent the first 22 years of his adult life (1893-1915) practicing law in South Africa, where he first developed his principles of non-violent resistance on behalf of Indian immigrants in South Africa. The first 42 minutes of the movie are devoted to this critical period.
We begin watching as Gandhi returns in 1915 to an India he feels that he barely knows anymore, where he is celebrated as a hero by the leaders of the Congress Party, an organization formed to work for Indian independence from British rule. He shocks those gathered to welcome him as he gets off the ship by wearing the simple clothing of an Indian peasant, a practice he continues for the rest of life.
Waiting in the carriage to pick him up at the dock is Sardar Patel, a successful Bombay lawyer who knew Gandhi as a young lawyer before he went to South Africa. Scurrying around to organize the welcome is a man Patel identifies as “young Nehru,” whose father was also a prominent lawyer. Jawaharlal Nehru later becomes the first Prime Minister of independent India and Patel becomes the deputy prime minister.
Gandhi is whisked off to an elegant garden party sponsored by the Congress Party where he is introduced to Mohammed Ali Jinnah, another Bombay lawyer, who became the first President of Pakistan. Over the next 30 minutes you will see how Gandhi assumed leadership over both the goals and methods of the Congress Party, concluding with the successful all-India strike of 1922.
We then skip over 25 years of history and about 50 minutes of the movie to pick up in 1947 with the arrival of Lord Mountbatten, sent by the British government to negotiate India’s transition to independence. You will see that the Hindu-Muslim alliance maintained during the struggle for independence has broken down, despite Gandhi’s heroic efforts, with Jinnah now demanding on behalf of Muslims a separate country, to be called Pakistan. (If you compare the maps of India under British rule and in 1970, you will see how Pakistan was carved out of colonial India with a remarkable arrangement where one part of the country, West Pakistan, was separated by the entire continent of India from the other part, East Pakistan. East Pakistan later fought West Pakistan to become its own country, Bangladesh.)
Watching the movie is intended to give you some quick insight into three aspects of India’s history that have greatly shaped its current legal system: (1) the blending of English and Indian culture and institutions (note how many key leaders were trained in England as lawyers), (2) the tension between Hindus and Muslims, and (3) the visionary leadership of Gandhi.
Source : http://law.gsu.edu/ccunningham/fall03/MovieGuide.htm
