Directed by: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth
Nehru: Think of what you can do by living, that you cannot do by dying... What do you want?
Gandhi: That the fighting will stop. That you make me believe it will never start again.
Nehru: Bapuji, the whole country is moving.
Gandhi: Yes. But in what direction?
Factual error: During the scenes of the Calcutta riots and various other places, we see various cars from the 50's when the events in question took place in the 40's. Most notably several Morris cars which hadn't been built yet.
Trivia: Ben Kingsley was offered the title role only after Alec Guinness and Anthony Hopkins turned it down.
Question: What reason did the British general give for having opened fire on the unarmed crowd?
Answer: Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer has said his intent "was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience." Earlier that day, Dyer has banned all meetings to avoid any insurrection, but many still gathered to celebrate and protest. Dyer saw it as defiance of his order and thought it could be another mob insurgent he had seen earlier. Some reports also state while the crowd was "unarmed", that only referred to being unarmed with firearms and many in the crowd did have other types of weapons. It also seems at the time it was standard practice for the British Army to use necessary lethal force for civilian crowd control, although many saw Dyer's action to be in excess.
Bishop73