The film was banned in Pakistan at the time of its release and over the years, the depiction of Jinnah has come under heavy scrutiny, from the non-resemblance of actor Alyque Padamsee in the role to his depiction as an obstructionist to Gandhi’s plans.

Major criticism, both at the time of the film’s release and still today, centers on the portrayal of Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistan and champion of Muslim rights in South Asia. Other characters in the film such as photographer Margaret Bourke White ( Candice Bergen) did in fact famously photograph Gandhi for Life magazine in 1946 and was the last person to interview Gandhi before his assassination in 1948. The character of Vince Walker (Martin Sheen), the New York Times’ journalist Gandhi initially meets in South Africa and then again at the time of Salt March is fictional, inspired by real-life American war correspondent Webb Miller who did not meet the real Gandhi in South Africa, but whose coverage of the march on the Dharasana Salt Works helped change global opinion on the British rule of India. It’s the depiction of real persons where Attenborough takes his greatest liberties and has drawn most criticism. Gandhi contains the important historical moments: Gandhi’s removal from a first-class train carriage due to his ethnicity and subsequent fight for Indian civil rights in South Africa (1893-1914) his return to India (1915) the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar that saw British Indian Army soldiers open fire on a gathering of unarmed men, women and children resulting in hundreds of deaths Gandhi’s numerous arrests by the British ruling party in the hope it would diminish his teachings of noncooperation the Salt March or Dandi March of 1930 in which, as a demonstration over the British tax on salt, Gandhi and his followers walked almost 400 miles from Ahmedabad to the sea near Dandi in order to make salt themselves his marriage to Kasturba Gandhi (1883-1944) the end of British rule in 1947 when the British Indian Empire split into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan and his assassination by shooting at the hands right-wing Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse in 1948.Ĭritics didn't like the director's portrayal of real people

Gandhi movie cast colin