‘Addressing the masses’: Gandhi's notion of ‘the people’ and Indian cinema's popular market

Abstract

This article scrutinizes a seldom discussed relationship between the Indian nationalist movement's most charismatic leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the newly emergent cinematic medium at the high tide of the nationalist movement, from the 1920s till the country's independence. Despite Gandhi's stiff resistance against the use of this medium in his programmes to reach out to the masses, the film industry made an early effort to align itself with the nationalist movement, and Gandhi in particular, accommodating various thematic, stylistic and ideological components of the Gandhian principles and the Gandhian politics, which dominated the contemporary political culture. Film-makers often embodied the Gandhian political culture through ‘bio-pics’ featuring the medieval sant leaders whom Gandhi revered for their contribution in addressing social problems and issues like untouchability. Highlighting an indigenous critique of existing social issues, in line with the Gandhian project, the contemporary filmic media resonated swadeshi ideals, which, it was imagined, would be useful to balance the capital intensive, industrial enterprise, on the one hand, and get a wider popular response, on the other. The Gandhian paradigm of ‘people of India’ thus met a market-oriented conception of mass or ‘public’ (as used till date in the filmi jargon signifying audiences). This article focuses on this relationship to explore the linkage of political culture and cinema in a period when for the first time, ‘people's’ participation mattered in bringing success to both – the political movements and the newly emergent filmic medium in India.