I watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi this week.
I remember being taken to it by my parents back in 1982. There was an intermission half way through as the reels were changed. I was 10 years old and as the film opened with his assassination, then jumped back in time, I remember being blown away by the power of this mixed up chronology.
Now, all these years later, watching someone break the hold of an oppressive economic elite through radical, inclusive, non-violent empowerment of the poor and dispossessed… it struck me how the West needs him now as much as India needed him then.