During his lifetime, the only Hindi film Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi watched was Ram Rajya, a film based on his favourite epic Ramayana . G...
During his lifetime, the only Hindi film Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi watched was Ram Rajya, a film based on his favourite epic Ramayana. Gandhi, then 74, saw the film in a special screening at Juhu in Mumbai on June 2, 1944, during his illness.
Gandhi had agreed to see only select reels of the movie for 40 minutes but ended up watching the film for an hour and a half. Filmmaker Vijay Bhatt, a fellow Gujarati of Gandhi, later claimed that the Mahatma looked “cheerful” at the end of the show.
That same year, before Ram Rajya, Gandhi was persuaded to watch Mission to Moscow, a Hollywood movie by Michael Kurtiz filmed to promote the American alliance with the then USSR.
Like many of his contemporaries in the Indian freedom movement, Gandhi did not think very highly of cinema. He believed Hindi as well as foreign films promoted immorality and corrupted young minds.
When T Rangachariar, the then chairman of the Cinematograph Committee placed a questionnaire before him to know his views on cinema in 1937, the father of the Indian nation described cinema a “sinful technology”. Gandhi considered cinema a waste of resources and time.
The Mahatma even refused to invoke cinema for education.
“I have never once been to a cinema and refuse to be enthused about it...
