As writer-director Ramesh Sharma’s Ahimsa Gandhi: The Power of the Powerless ended, I thought about those haunting frames from Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. You know, the moment Sir Ben Kingsley, shot at point-blank range, cries, “OH GOD!” I look around at the state of the world and see the same cries echoing from distant corners. The same intolerance cut down one of the penultimate practitioners of non-violence. He gave his life to the opposition. However, this is no mere retread of the Attenborough classic. While the documentary focuses on the life and events that marked the great soul’s life as extraordinary, it instead examines the influence of Gandhi’s message and the cultural ripple his stance against injustice sent through the passage of time. This documentary extends that life and teachings.
From the atrocities Gandhi experienced in his youth till his death, to the horrors of The Third Reich, Apartheid South Africa, Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall (where a screening of Gandhi paved the way for non-violent uprisings in what was formerly Czechoslovakia); all those that lived, survived and endured beyond these dictatorships know they were sundered and undone by non-violent protests very much inspired by Gandhi’s perpetual influence. Sharma’s film reinforces that the true enemy of humankind is hatred. And we are still under the shroud of our country’s pasts, pasts that we still cannot deal with. Therefore, we as a species remain stuck in the past, with all the old evil and oppression that may seem dormant. But the fire that often seems out of sight sleeps beneath the ciders
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“…the interviewees, including Gandhi’s own grandchildren, reflect on the impact of the past on the future…”
What struck this reviewer most was that this film made me think about the fact that Gandhi, Martin Luther King, JFK, even going back to Abraham Lincoln; these were men shot and killed for trying to heal their worlds divided. I suppose I could take the easy route and tell you that Ahimsa Gandhi: The Power of the Powerless is timely, topical, and important. Yet to do so would be to marginalize it and speak subtly about the severity of the cause it stands for.
But as the interviewees, including Gandhi’s own grandchildren, reflect on the impact of the past on the future, the continuing search for unity among all members of humanity, the film serves as a rallying cry for more educators to employ the teachings and practices of Gandhi when combating indifference and indecency, for they have the potential to inform the next age. They have the chance to save it from the insanity of the one we’re living in. As they say in the documentary, “Without non-violence, there is only non-existence.”
Ahimsa Gandhi: The Power of the Powerless reminds us that it is our moral obligation to fight for those unable to fight for themselves, and against causes that are immoral and unjust. We must aspire to be more of an international community, rather than primarily focusing on the vivisection of one another, and redeem the soul of the world before it’s too late.
"…timely, topical, and important"
