Bharat Nirman and the Aestheticization of Politics

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), popularly addressed as Mahatma strove hard to blur out the dialectics of the ‘personal’ (private) and the ‘political’ (public). Tridip Suhrud in Rediscovering Gandhi has argued that a divide between the ‘political’ and the ‘spiritual’ has been the hallmark of the entire academic scrutiny on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. However, the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’ nuances of Gandhi have not been acknowledged within the Bombay Filmdom until the late 1990s. Gandhi was accorded a saintly status after independence and it became a formidable task to animate him on to the celluloid screen. Contrary to this, there has been an instantaneous enticement towards Gandhi in the ‘multiplex era’ which simultaneously coincides with the leadership of United Progressive Alliance and its endorsement of ‘Bharat-Nirman’ agenda. This paper will attempt to examine the ideologies behind the recent hype on Gandhi both as a ‘subject’ and ‘pedagogue’ in Bombay Cinema, and the possible nexus between mainstream politics and the cinematic imagination. More specifically, by carrying out a socio-political study of a set of select films, this paper would assert that an attempt has been made through the celluloid to aestheticize Gandhi which not only obliterate the ground realities of the Indian socio-democratic structure, rather more significantly do a disservice to Gandhi himself who was in favor of maintaining a ‘dialogical’ attitude towards the ‘self’ as well as with the ‘others’