3
Joseph Earle
Mahatma Gandhi Building on Hindu Beliefs
The 1982 movie Gandhi, gives viewers a look into the life Mahatma Gandhi. The movie shows us how Gandhi tried to get the people around him to see that violence doesn’t solve any of the world’s problems. The director of the movie, Richard Attenborough incorporated many Hindu beliefs and traditions into the film, which I now noticed having studied Hinduism. In the film, Gandhi teaches us the viewer many different Hindu practices and how Gandhi built on the work of early Hindus. And this movie showed how religion had a major factor in the disagreements or fights that Gandhi was trying to stop or prevent all together.
Gandhi showed us the viewers many different types of Hindu practices. One of the traditions shown in the film was the wedding ceremony. Gandhi and his wife Kasturba demonstrate the wedding ceremony to some of their friends who aren’t familiar with the process. The bride and groom must walk around a fire while saying certain lines to each other. Gandhi and his wife say these lines for their friends as they walk around a fire. Us the viewers can also notice the mark on the foreheads of the women. These forehead marks were placed on a woman during the wedding ceremony competition to signify that others of their married status.
Towards the end of the movie when Gandhi is fasting, it shows us the viewers another belief when many different men come to visit him. One man tells Gandhi that he is going to hell because he killed a child (messed up). This man was talking about his karma. In the Hindu culture, people are stuck in a continuous cycle in which the soul is reborn over and over again according to the law of action and reaction. The only way to break this cycle is to achieve moksha by either having it erased by a deity or collecting no karma at all. Gandhi tells this man who has karma that he can get a god to grant ...
