Movie Reflection - Gandhi

This film has perfectly portrayed the significant events of Gandhi's life. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was also known as Gandhiji, is the Father of Indian Nation at all time. He was the one who strive for India's independence from the United Kingdom and also the founder of Nonviolent protest campaign for Indian's right in South Africa. With all his influential and remarkable acts, he was referred as 'Mahatma', meaning Great Soul.

The characters and qualities of Gandhi are well shown in this 3-hour movie. The most obvious and strong characteristic of Mahatma Gandhi is that he is a very stubborn person or in other words persistence. Despite all the arrest and obstacles he faced in facing the rights for Indians in South Africa, he never once gave up. Especially on the first protest, although he was hit badly for burning the passes, he never thought of stopping. He would rather endure the pain and continue burning the passes as an act of protest than being obedient to what he thinks is injustice. Along the journey of achieving India's independence, he was very persistence in using a non-violent way to protest too. Never once he fought back when facing the cruel British army. However, it is this characteristic of his that have brought him all these success. As he admitted of being stubborn, he knew clearly that persistence is the key to success in dealing with all these harsh and tough parties.

Another reason of his success was because of his high self-efficacy. He has faith within himself and he always believes that he has the competencies to change the world. He trusts that to change the world, he has to take the first step. He believes that by doing what is right, he can bring along the whole Nations with him in achieving independence. From the quote above, it can be seen that Gandhi noted the importance of self-efficacy. He knows that doubt of oneself can make an individual incapable and hence, he always has strong faith in himself in whatever he does. Even he is not good at doing a task, he never backed up and trust that he can overcome the obstacles. For example on the beginning of the film, it is shown that he does not have much skills in orating and throughout the film, he improves slowly with all the speeches he gave. Later on, his public speaking skills have become good and his speeches can inspire millions of people. This refinement mainly comes from the trust of self-competence.

Gandhiji is indeed a very interesting character. As he always emphasized on using non-violence and peace, he has his own unique way of protesting and showing his core beliefs. Instead of having a civil war, he fought against the British government by making his own salt and insisted on weaving his own clothes. This is because the British government has a law that no other people can produce salt without the legal permission to do so. As an act of civil disobedience, Gandhi ignores the law and lead his people to make their own salt. Not only so, as the British often encourages the Indians to use British products, Gandhi weaves his own clothes to show that he is not afraid to disregard  them even in his daily life. He believes that these little aspects in life are the symbols of obedience and slavery to the British. Hence, he insisted to making his own clothes.

One important aspect that is shown in the movie is the prejudice and discrimination happens in real life. At first it was the British against the Indians, and in the end, it is the Hindus and Muslims. Prejudice and Discrimination are different. Prejudice is the negative attitude and beliefs towards one based on their social group. On the other hand, discrimination is the negative act and behaviour towards one. There are a few examples of discrimination in the movie. From the very first scene itself, it is showed that Gandhi was kicked out the train for being in the 'Whites-only' compartment. Although he is rich and has the ticket, the people refuse to let him ride in the first class section. The act of scolding and throwing him out is discrimination. Another example of discrimination is shown in the movie is that when Gandhi and a white report was walking on the street, three white young men came and disturbed Gandhi telling him that black are not supposed to be on the pavement. They blocked their way and kept making fun of Gandhi. For discrimination to occur, prejudice must exist. However, people who are prejudice might not necessary act out their attitude.

From this film, we can explain the occurrence of  prejudice and discrimination in three ways. As the British was ruling India for a long period of time, it is shown that they have a strong authoritarian acting. They wanted the Indians to go according to their way and view them as inferior individuals. They believe the Indians belong to the slavery status and need to have a respect for the higher authoritarian figure. In this movie, we can see many British are over obsessive towards their rank believing that they have certain toughness that all the Indians must respect on. When people start to disobey them, authoritarian individuals would get very agitated and make sure everyone knows that they are the one who have a say. In the film, there is a few scene where the British would hit and kill the Indians without mercy for protesting. One example in the movie, is the mass shooting, killing thousands of Indian for protesting. Although the Indians has no intentions on acting violently, the army general did not care nor gave warning. He got very furious with the Indian's disobedience and ordered his army to shoot them to death. Even when he was questioned by his own authority, he showed no remorse over his action.

Another cause of prejudice and discrimination is stereotyping. This describes the generalization beliefs about a particular group due to the minorities' actions. People who has stereotypes often ignores the differences between individuals and infer one's characteristic to all the members of the groups. The discrimination and prejudice between the Hindus and Muslims are caused by this factor. There is one scene in the movie where a Hindu man explains to Gandhi of his acts and anger towards Muslims is because that he thinks all Muslims are murderers as his own son are killed by a Muslim.
This is a clear example of stereotyping and how it causes discrimination.

Lastly, prejudice and discrimination can also be explained through social identity theory. This theory mainly talks about how ones identify themselves according to their own membership of certain group and label people who are not in the same group as 'others'. This cognitive process categories us and others into two groups, the in-group and the out-group. Social Identity Theory states that discrimination and prejudice happens because of this cognitive categorization where in-group would often look for negative cues or attributions to the out-group. In the movie, we can see that the Muslims and Hindus have their own group and are not willing to unite as a whole nation. Although Gandhi often tells the others that every human are the same, there are still many people who oppose this concept as they view themselves and the rest from other religions are different groups.


Personally, I find this movie very eye-opening. This film has did a very good job in portraying the life of Gandhi.Although it is a bit too long (3 hours), it is worth a watch. Especially for people who are not much of a reader, this movie can give a good insight into Gandhi's character and achievements. To conclude this article, I've included my favorite quote from Mahatma Gandhi on below.

*All pictures do not belong to me and can be found in google images