By Mayank Chhaya
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gaffe, if it was indeed that, in saying that the world did not know about Gandhi before a film was made on his life requires no refutation because it is an absurd contention on the face of it.
That Gandhi was already a globally known and admired figure even in the 1930s, if not much earlier, some five decades before the British actor-director Richard Attenborough made a multiple Oscar-winning movie is just a historic fact.
It is a matter of record that Attenborough wanted to make a feature film about Gandhi in the early 1950s soon after he read the much-respected American journalist Louis Fischer’s iconic book ‘The Life of Mahatma Gandhi’, published in 1950. That was barely two years after Gandhi was assassinated. He first attempted to do so in 1962 when Jawaharlal Nehru was the country’s prime minister. Nehru was more than effusive about the project. Attenborough eventually made it in 1980-81 and released it in 1982 to massive global acclaim.
Time magazine had published Gandhi twice on its cover in 1930 and 1931 to be followed by one more time in 1947. There is so much historical material available to ridicule Modi’s strange contention that it would be pointless to do so.
Why then did he say that in a television interview? Perhaps the simple answer is that because that is his wont — saying things that are often bizarre and laughable. As Modi’s many contentions go, this one is particularly strange because it has no political upside or reward to it. It neither furthers his ideology, such as it is, in any way nor does it have any immediate electoral value in the last phase of India’s national election.
One would presume that even he would have known the ridicule it would expose him to, something he is not known to care about. After all, only days earlier he had said in another television interview that he is convinced that he is not of biological origin, but someone perhaps sent by god. He said he was conscious that his critics and detractors would tear him apart for saying that. And yet he went ahead to make the staggering claim.
It is hard to guess Modi’s motivations or the factors that propel him to say things he has said this election season. The most charitable explanation could be that he does so as a cynical political ploy to distract people from the more consequential existential issues such as widespread unemployment, degrading impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people and inflation which have a direct bearing on the outcome of the election and hence his own future.
As an illustration of that cynical strategy, social media exploded with unvarnished derision and ridicule of the prime minister. Many handles were quick to publish front page covers of Time as well as other leading Western newspapers from the 1930s and after to underscore how much global currency Gandhi had enjoyed before the film was made.
If his calculation is that he would not mind a couple of days of ridicule until June 1 when the last phase of the seven-phase 44-day marathon concludes as long the real issues of substance slide by the people’s minds, then his observation about Gandhi may work.
He could not but be aware that come June 4, when the results of the election will be announced, and people will have forgotten about the Gandhi gaffe. In any case, contrary to the popular belief it is unlikely to have any serious political downside since such utterances are already baked into his persona by his diehard followers after 2014 when he first became prime minister.
