Feroz directed Gandhi My Father

‘GANDHI’S OUR CONSCIENCE’

The director and actor of the National Award-winning Gandhi, My Father, Feroz Abbas Khan & Darshan Jariwala, explain the rationale behind making the film, and why Gandhi and his thoughts are still relevant

MEDHA SHRI , Times News Network; 2-oct-2009

Feroz Abbas Khan’s Gandhi, My Father won accolades and bagged awards not just in India, but also at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Tokyo Film Awards. Not just that, the film won admiration and praise from Nelson Mandela himself. More recently, Gandhi, My Father has become the talk of the town again for bagging three National film awards for 2007. “I had moved on after the movie,” says Feroz, the director. “The other awards were more timely.”

Feroz, who’s travelled across continents with his film and several plays, says that his plays generally, “deal with the Indian audience and people who are familiar with Indian culture.” But cinema, he explains, is a wider medium. “Thus, my film cuts across different nations and cultures as it deals with humanity and concerns that are universal.”

Though Gandhi, My Father is a period film that required Feroz to spend time in libraries and browse through autobiographies and letters, the movie appealed to the audience worldwide because it was contemporary, he believes. “The film is not about Gandhi and his son Harilal, but about a challenge that all parents face today – the aspirations of children, the parents’ limitations, and their constant effort to reconcile both. The problem is universal and that’s why it affects people in every corner of the world.”

Did he have any apprehensions about making a film on the personal life of a national icon? “I have been asked this question often,” says he. “I was never scared because I was in the pursuit of truth.” As for the ‘super censors,’ Feroz makes a point, “This is all political posturing in the garb of social policing. Whenever a political or any other group wants to attract attention, they do this. And we are soft targets because they know we will not retaliate. The publicity is great for them and they know the advantage that they get out of this.” The filmmaker adds that it’s sad that the government doesn’t do anything about it. “The singular responsibility of checking these people lies with the state. It’s the state’s abject failure to protect people’s rights,” he says vehemently.

So much is said about Gandhi – people like him, don’t like him, people attack him and put him on a pedestal “because they have vested interests. The real Gandhi is somewhere in between,” says Feroz. “A lot of it is political mudslinging, particularly by the right wing, which tries to negate his contribution. He stands for so many things that define the nation. He stands for responsibility, accountability, truth and a lot of what is right in the country. He is our moral conscience. Anything or anybody that doesn’t pass what I call the Gandhi Test, blames Gandhi because it makes them feel uncomfortable. No matter what you say, you’ll have a reference to Gandhi in India and other countries where he shaped the nation.” Feroz quotes Gopal Gandhi here – “Gandhi is the inconvenient truth.”

Feroz likes the other recent Gandhi film, Lagey Raho Munna Bhai. “It’s a novel way to convey the ideas and ideals of Gandhi to the younger generation. It’s an outstanding, entertaing film. It shows Gandhi as a nice person doing good to everybody,” says Feroz. He believes that sometimes, the problem with filmmakers is that they expect stars to act. When he approached Akshay Khanna, he told him, “You have to be an actor, not a star.” But that doesn’t mean he won’t make the musicals. He says, “My next film is again going to be something that I feel for and that I want to stand up and share with people. It can be a musical.”

Pics: Times Of India

Darshan Jariwala played Gandhi in Gandhi My Father, won a national award too.

Gandhi ka filmi Darshan

Medha Shri, TNN, 2-oct-2009

He’s won the National Award recently for his portrayal of Gandhi in Gandhi, My Father. But how does actor Darshan Jariwala like the other Gandhis on screen? “Honestly, I haven’t seen many of those films. I don’t think Lagey Raho Munna Bhai had a portrayal of Gandhi. It’s actually one character’s imagination of Gandhi. I saw Ben Kingsley as Gandhi many years ago,” says Darshan.

What preparation went into playing the character? “This is a director’s construction of Gandhi,” says Darshan. “It’s a unique take on the Mahatma as it deals with a side of Gandhi that was personal, which is a more human Gandhi, which doesn’t deify Gandhi, doesn’t presume his greatness, though at the end, one realises that Gandhi was indeed great. He stuck to his principles and did what he thought was right. Not that he didn’t care for his son, but he cared for truth more, or at least for his beliefs. I read up on Harilal to understand the relationship of the father and son.”

The stereotypical image of Gandhi is that of an old man in a dhoti with spectacles and a stick. Does that make it easier to play him, because one knows how he was, or difficult, because there’s nothing new left to do? “The portrayal of Gandhi becomes easier if the actor makes an attempt to make Gandhi grow from the inside out in him. I look a lot different from Gandhi, yet, when people saw me, even those who have known me for 40 years thought I looked like him. I did that not by mimicking him or his actions but because it came from the core. An actor needs to unearth what he accumulates over years and empty himself to let Gandhi take shape. He shouldn’t be himself, but the character. If I looked like him, it was because people didn’t see Darshan Jariwala anywhere.”

There are as many critics of Gandhi as there are admirers. What is Darshan’s take on Gandhi? “I’m too small a man to sit in judgement on him. It will take generations of people after us to actually form anywhere close to an opinion about him. He is too big a phenomenon and too recent to be assessed correctly. As for the film, I would say, the nation disappointed Gandhi as much as his son. The Partition, the violence that followed, was an anathema to Gandhi, like his son’s behaviour.”
Gandhi tees and quotes are quite the ‘in’ thing. Does Darshan think people actually understand Gandhi, or do they think it’s just cool to do all this? “There may be a case or two where people think it’s cool to use Gandhi quotes, etc. Even if people do not totally understand Gandhi, they perceive the subtle truth of it,” he says. And that truth would be...? “That you always have a choice – between good and bad, speaking the truth and not speaking the truth, violence and non-violence. People should stand by their choices,” says Darshan.
Does he also follow Gandhian principle in his choices? “Of late, I must confess, I’ve started acknowledging the fact that we have a conscience that tells us what is good for us. The inner voice won’t be stilled, and it does need to be heard,” he says. Does “of late” mean after Gandhi...? “Yes, I learnt a few things from that character – like, people are not afraid of the truth but of the consequences of the truth. If we shed that fear, there’s no way we can go wrong.” And he adds, “Gandhi needed to communicate much better with his son, though there’s no evidence that he didn’t, he constantly expressed his views through his letters, yet there was this unbridgeable chasm between both of them and I’m quite aware of how difficult it is to communicate.”
Has he faced the same communication gap with his children? “Not just with children, it happens even when you are in a minority of thought and you have to take a stand and ask yourself whether the approval of this or that person is necessary for your happiness,” he signs off.
Pics: TOI