ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether the Hindi films made on Gandhi become his alter ego or not. For this purpose, the chapter uses a Hindi film ‘Gandhi, My Father’ as a text cum reference point. Gandhi establishes his relationship with cinema and cinema establishes its relationship with him atypically. His own opinion is an interesting one. In other words, despite Gandhi’s disdain, popular Hindi cinema has become a significant assimilatory space. Furthermore, Gandhi has been located in various spheres to unearth various nuances. At the philosophical level Gandhi and popular Hindi cinema adopt analogous spheres. Gandhi has influenced the popular Hindi cinema in a big way. In turn, popular Hindi cinema has been rallied on the creation of situation wherein Gandhi’s ‘philosophical engagement’ could be invoked. Since the alignment of popular Hindi cinema converges with the philosophical terrain of Gandhi, he becomes the Bapu which means absence of dialectic.
