Monte Casino, Johannesburg, 29 July 2007
Programme Director,
Members of the Gandhi Family,
Ministers and Deputy Ministers,
The Business Community,
Anil Kapoor, Co-producer,
Feroz Abbas Khan, Director of the movie,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I thank you very much for inviting me to this important event, the launch of the film, Gandhi my Father.
Launching this film in South Africa is no coincidence, since Gandhi spent many years in South Africa, from 1893 to 1914, a period during which he used his extraordinary energies to fight racism.
I think we will agree that the launch of this kind of movie, focusing on one of the greatest opponents of colonialism and racism, is long overdue.
We welcome this movie because I trust it can only reactivate our collective memory and deepen our understanding of the great sacrifices of this gigantic human being.
Indeed, Gandhi became a greater human being as he struggled personally, socially and politically, but always putting his principles and the quest for human dignity above everything else.
It is through this movie that for the first time many of us will have a peek into the family trial and tribulations of this noble human being who indeed became a citizen of the world.
I believe the movie Gandhi my Father, traces the life of Gandhi’s son, who was deprived of the normal relationship with his father because of the burden of freedom his father carried on his shoulders.
It is a burden Gandhi knew, from the beginning, would sever him from humanity’s most cherished institution – the family.
The pathos that flows from the disjuncture between father and son can only move us as we, in a way, share in the causes of this sad chapter in the glorious life of Gandhi.
We share in this heart-rending saga between Gandhi and his son and family, for it was for our total freedom from the crime of racial oppression that Gandhi dedicated his life.
A true and brave defender of the fundamental values of human dignity, Gandhi carried deep inside the recesses of his soul, the pain of sacrificing his fatherly obligations on the alter of human freedom.
Yet, this he did in the full knowledge that the universal cause of the human family, living in harmony and bound by the ties of love, tolerance, brotherhood and sisterhood, would more than make up for his personal losses as an individual.
We now have the benefit of history to appreciate the gift that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was to humanity. We now know that the greatness of his soul was not limited only to people of Indian descent who called him ‘Mahatma’, but to the human race as a whole.
Indeed, Gandhi’s life remains an extraordinary source of inspiration and hope from which the world would do well to draw some lessons to reinforce the hope for peace, justice and equality.
From his life, we learn that the quest for human freedom knows no bounds, or geographical boundaries.
Gandhi was the pioneer of Satyagraha — the resistance of tyranny through mass civil disobedience , firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence — which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
In his lifetime, he taught us the important lesson that fighting oppression is a human duty that must follow us wherever we go and wherever we are. Determined to see through these ideals, Gandhi forfeited the comforts of the life of a family man.
As if by the accident of history, Ghandi came to our land, South Africa, in 1893 for an assignment purely related to his legal profession.
In hindsight, it turned out that Gandhi could not have sojourned to a more appropriate human society for the teaching and spreading of his philosophy.
Driven by the sublime conviction that fighting oppression is a human duty that must follow us wherever we go and wherever we are, Gandhi’s conscience was troubled by the helplessness of his downtrodden people. Instead of resigning to the comfort associated with those in his class of the learned, he however chose struggle over privilege.
Instead of seeking refuge in what some may have found excusable for a sojourner to avoid meddling in the political affairs of a host country, Gandhi’s humanity impelled him consciously to play a leading role in the defence of the powerless.
He prolonged what should have been a year of professional legal practice in South Africa to more than a decade of toil and persecution. He joined the people in their daily humiliation and subjugation by the white rulers of the day and inspired future freedom struggles in South Africa and beyond.
For his defence of human rights and pursuit of human dignity, Gandhi bore the brunt of the repression of the then racist regime of South Africa, as it was the predetermined fate of all who dared to challenge the status quo.
Yet, even in the loneliness of his prison cell, Gandhi continued to pray for the redemption of his jailers, so that, eventually, they too could see the light; so that, finally, they could overcome the malady of racism afflicting their state of being.
He wished his persecutors could be lifted from the unconscious trappings of evil in order for them to enjoy the contentment that goes with a fuller understanding of what it means to be human.
While languishing in prison, Gandhi did something that only a true human being could do. He prepared a pair of sandals to be handed as a gift to General Jan Smuts, a South African military man who was then a leading representative of oppression and white supremacist ideas.
How many of us today still aspire to see our enemies as people to whom we can extend a gift? How many of us today can prepare a pair of sandals as a gift to those who wish for our humiliation?
How many believers in the world today are still striving to live up to the religious teaching that ‘we should pray for our enemies’?
It is this indomitable spirit and demonstrable commitment to peace that continue to expose the hollowness of those who have sought to discredit Gandhi’s passive resistance and non-violence campaign as mere philosophical sentimentalism.
Not only did he preach non-violence in peace and tranquil times, he was ready to and, indeed, did teach soldiers and police forces wielding guns that they, too, were part of the human family.
In South Africa and subsequently in his mother land, India, the people did not call Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi “the man of great soul” for nothing.
He suffered with the people; he toiled with the people; ate and lived with the people; and struggled with and for the ordinary people.
Despite having acquired some of his education in England, something then considered a rare and prestigious achievement, he chose practically to be part of the daily travails and wretchedness that defined the collective fate of his people.
Even in the gun-frenzied atmosphere that accompanied the two World Wars, Gandhi relentlessly hoisted the flag of peace for the rest of the globe to see.
It is his unflinching belief in world peace that led him to declare that the world needs a “federation of friendly interdependent states”.
Indeed, Gandhi’s influence lived and continues to extend long after he departed from the world of the living. The great African-American leader of the civil rights movement in the United States of America, Dr Martin Luther King Jr., acknowledged the influence that Gandhi’s philosophy of passive resistance had on his own struggle against racism in America in the 1960s.
Without doubt, Mahatma Gandhi belonged to a special category of human beings described by Bertrand Russell when he says:
“In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greed, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression.” (Noam Chomsky’s Problems of Knowledge and freedom)
Chairperson,
You will agree with me that Gandhi’s life is a true story of an extraordinary human being whose life has been fruitful to all of us. Yet, Gandhi’s personal life, philosophy, and intellectual persuasions should be further known to all the people of the world.
It is for this reason I trust that the film we are launching here is more than an average action-filled Hollywood movie.
This is, and indeed must be, a movie that should help us delve deeper into the annals of history that sharpen our collective and individual sense of the true fulfillment of the human spirit.
I am certain the lessons to be drawn from this film will make us realise just how much Gandhi sacrificed during his lifetime and how much we owe it to this history to try and build a better world.
This must be a movie that impels its viewers to reconnect with their humanity; a movie that opens up a collective window of opportunity for the human race to grasp the possibility of a better world.
I wish this film every success and hope that the message it carries shall reach all corners of the world.
Thank you.