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List of artistic depictions of Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a key Indian independence movement leader known for employing nonviolent resistance against British Rule to successfully lead the campaign. He was the pioneer of Satyagraha — the resistance of alleged tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total nonviolence — which inspired movements for civil rights and freedom around the world. Gandhi is commonly known in India and around the world with the honorific Mahatma Gandhi (Sanskrit: महात्मा mahātmā — "Great Soul") and as Bapu (Gujarati: બાપુ bāpu — "Father"). In India, he is recognised as the Father of the Nation by all Indians and 2 October, his birthday, is commemorated each year on Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday.

Currency and stamps

In 1996, the Government of India introduced the Mahatma Gandhi series of currency notes in rupees 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 denomination. Today, all the currency notes in circulation in India contain a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1969, the United Kingdom issued a series of stamps commemorating the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi.

There have been approximately 250 stamps issued bearing Gandhi's image from 80 different countries worldwide.

Film

Literature

Memorials, paintings, sculptures, and statues

There have been numerous . In New Delhi, Gandhi Smriti, or Birla House, the home of Ghanshyam Das Birla, where Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, was acquired by the Government of India in 1971 and opened to the public in 1973 as the Gandhi Smriti or "Gandhi Remembrance". It preserves the room where Mahatma Gandhi lived the last four months of his life and the grounds where he was shot while holding his nightly public walk. A Martyr's Column now marks the place where Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated.

In 1988, India donated a bust of Gandhi to the city of Burgos, Spain, which is located in a park. The city of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa—where Gandhi was ejected from a first-class train in 1893—now hosts a commemorative statue that was unveiled during the 2003 Cricket World Cup by the Indian team led by captain Saurav Ganguly. In the United Kingdom, there are several prominent statues of Gandhi, most notably two in London: one in Tavistock Square near University College London where he studied law, and another in Parliament Square and Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Golden Mile in Belgrave. 30 January is commemorated in the United Kingdom as the "National Gandhi Remembrance Day."

In the United States, there is a statue of Gandhi outside the Union Square Park in New York City, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, and a Mahatma Gandhi Memorial on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., near the Indian Embassy. There is a Gandhi statue in San Francisco Embarcadero Neighborhood. In 2009, a statue of Gandhi was installed outside the Bellevue Library in Washington state. There are wax statues of Gandhi at the Madame Tussaud's wax museums in London, New York, and other cities around the world.

Józef Gosławski designed a caricature of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in 1932, which was cast in bronze in 2007.

Gandhi's Three Monkeys is a series of sculptures created by Indian artist Subodh Gupta. The sculptures recall a visual metaphor from Gandhi, of the "Three wise monkeys", representing the principle "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".

In 2010, realist painter Gopal Swami Khetanchi depicted Gandhi's dream of an independent India in his exhibition titled Gandhigiri. The exhibition displayed twenty-one artworks depicting an elderly Gandhi with other elements and figures complementing or countering the discourse.

In Australia, the Indian community of Brisbane commissioned a statue of Gandhi, created by Ram V. Sutar and Anil Sutar in the Roma Street Parkland. It was unveiled In 2014, by Narendra Modi, then Prime Minister of India.

On 22 November 2018, President of India Ramnath Kovind unveiled a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parramatta, Sydney, Australia.

In 2018, a statue of Gandhi at the University of Ghana, erected in 2016, was removed, "after protests from students and faculty who argue the Indian independence leader considered Africans 'inferior'.... Campaigners in Malawi are trying to stop another Gandhi statue from being erected in the capital Blantyre."

In 2019, the fifth statue of Gandhi in the United Kingdom was unveiled at Manchester Cathedral. The statue weighing 800 kg and measuring 9 feet was a gift from Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur, a worldwide spiritual organization. It was unveiled by the mayor of Manchester and Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshbhai along with several guests as a symbol of peace and compassion, following the 2017 terror attack at Manchester Arena.

Music videos

Television

  • 2002-03: Gandhi Smith is a main character in the animated series Clone High; his depiction on the show was controversial and resulted in its cancellation after only one season. When the show was revived in 2023, Gandhi was excluded from the main cast, though was still referenced by other characters, suggesting a possible return in future seasons.
  • 2004: "One World: Telecom Italia 'Gandhi' ": An award-winning television commercial produced by Y&R, Italy and directed by Spike Lee. It depicts Gandhi broadcasting a speech during World War II, reaching audiences through the use of digital technology.

Theater

Video games

Civilization

In the Civilization Turn-based strategy series (1991–present), Gandhi appears as the leader of the Indian civilisation starting from the first game in the series Civilization (1996) and all other games in the series excluding spin-offs.

If the player is not playing as the Indian civilisation, the computer makes Gandhi act in much the same way as real life (i.e. peaceful) and will not attack other civilisations unless attacked himself. As part of the series, the technology tree in the games allow both the player's own civilisation and others controlled by the computer to discover nuclear energy and subsequently develop nuclear weapons.

From the first game in the series up to and including Civilization IV (2005), Gandhi does use the weapons during a war (which by his very nature is strictly a defensive war) but not any more than any other peaceful leader (such as Abraham Lincoln, leader of the American civilisation) although it was perceived.

Starting from Civilization V (2010) onwards, a new feature by programmer Jon Shafer was added as a joke where once Gandhi gains nuclear weapons, he will bomb neighbouring civilisation and the player's own. The joke was that Gandhi is famous for his strict adherence to the principle of non-violence and so it would be extremely uncharacteristic of Gandhi to start a war, especially a nuclear war, leading to internet memes about a so-called "Nuclear Gandhi".

Over time, it became a popular misconception that a glitch in the first game and/or the second game, Civilization II (1996) turned Gandhi into a nuclear warmonger under such circumstances. Supposedly, the glitch was caused by an integer overflow error whereby Gandhi's aggression level was set to "1" (the lowest level) and if it lowered again, instead of the non-existent "0", it would instead lower to "255" (the highest level) and make Gandhi very aggressive.

In 2020, the first game's creator, Sid Meier stated that no such glitch was in the first Civilization and the game was not programmed in such a manner as the first game used the programing language C and the second game used C++. In both, those programing languages, all integer variables are signed by default making such a glitch impossible.

See also

Further reading

Notes