Gandhi Movie
We used to accept violence and physical power as the natural way to protect us from any kind of violence. If we are insulted, we insult in return without even thinking about any other variants. If somebody is told that he should not use violence, the reaction will be rather aggressive – the issue is that we know no other ways of protection. But there are people, who are able to find the other ways of protecting, the ways of fighting and gaining great aims. The film Gandhi showed me the man, who was able to do it by means of own powerful spirit.
When people want to change something, they fight. They take guns, knives and go to kill those, who do not agree with them. And they think it works, really, a lot of people think that it works better than anything else. It might be surprising, but one of the modern researchers named Erica Chenoweth proved that this is rather wrong approach. Nonviolence works much better, despite it is so difficult to believe in it. In fact, Gandhi had never heard about the results of the research, conducted by Erica, but at the same time, the understanding of the power of non-violence belonged to him. This can be characterized as a highest wisdom, but in case of Gandhi it was effective in combination with the great power of spirit. And it let him really change the world.
Usually I accept the phrase ‘he changed the world’ rather skeptically. I always think that the world has always been the same and people, who are claimed to change it are unable to make any impact. But after watching this film I began accepted it in a different way. I saw how a little man was able to make his country free from Britain, to make people stop fighting and killing each other without any signs of aggression. In fact, the most aggressive thing that he had done was burning the British close and fabric. He had rather unique understanding of the notions like equality, non-violence, religion. For me the most impressive scenes from the film were connected with the process of inweaving or taking care about the goats.
I think that the idea of non-violence was taken by Gandhi from his right understanding of the concept of God. He percepted all people as children of one common God and he had never divided them into the groups, according to their religion. He claimed him to be Muslim, Christian and others at the same time, as all these religions are based on one common idea. One of the most impressive scenes in the film was when Gandhi told a man, who killed a Muslim child, to find and adopt Muslim boy and to raise him in Muslim traditions.
While watching the film, I was impressed and at the same time I could not believe that such a man could really exist. In fact, I this film I saw the enlightened man with the powerful spirit. I saw the man, who was able to say the British politics that they must leave his country. I believed in the idea of non-violence, but after I saw the violence of the British soldiers, when Gandhi was trying to burn the passes of Indian people in Africa, when I saw cruel conflict with Muslims, I understood that in modern world the idea of non-violence cannot be understood by people easily. We need hundreds of Gandhis to explain people all over the world that they do not need to fight; they just need to love each other. At the same time, the fact that this man was killed is able to destroy all my belief in humanity and non-violence.