I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In India, it's hard not to have Gandhi as a hero. To give up everything - including power and money - and to live for his countrymen, that beats everything else. He's a role model of selflessness.
Gandhi's ideas were rooted in a wide experience of a freshly globalized world.
Though blessed with many able administrators, the British found India just too large and diverse to handle. Many of their decisions stoked Hindu-Muslim tensions, imposing sharp new religious-political identities on Indians.
Gandhi has more recently recognized the need for continuance of British, American and Chinese efforts in India and has suggested that these troops might remain by agreement with some new Indian Government.
There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.
Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.
My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.
Ben Kingsley was my ideal choice for Gandhi, and he really lived up to the expectations of an international audience. I did not find any Indian actor worthy to perform the role of Gandhi in the early Eighties, though there were brilliant performers like Naseeruddin Shah in India.
I will only say that many freedom fighters of India found their calling in the institutions of Britain. And many makers of modern India, including several of my distinguished predecessors, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Dr. Manmohan Singh, passed through their doors.
Mahatma Gandhi was someone who demonstrated the tremendous power of leadership by example.
No opposing quotes found.