Mahatma Gandhi The World's Most Photographed

In March 1946, a young American photographer made her way through the slums of Poona, near Bombay.

Margaret Bourke-White had been sent to photograph an old man whose name

had become famous throughout the world.

She found him in a dimly lit room,

working in silence at a spinning wheel.

He reluctantly agreed to be photographed...

but refused to pose and asked her not to use a flash.

In the heat, humidity and semi-darkness, Bourke-White

struggled to take her shots.

Despite the impossible conditions, she managed to capture

some of the most remarkable images ever taken of the man who was bringing the British Empire

to its knees -

Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi did more than anyone to liberate India from the British Empire.

Non-violent resistance, fasting and prayer

were at the heart of his campaign.

But Gandhi also used a series of carefully planned photo-opportunities

to wage a sophisticated campaign against colonial oppression.

In a country where a large number of people are illiterate,

it becomes extremely important to communicate with them

through the means of photographs, through the means of symbols.

For a non-violent person, the photograph is his greatest weapon.

Gandhi had a keen understanding of the power of photography.

Despite his humble image, this self-styled holy man in a loincloth

would emerge as a master of media-manipulation.

In 1888, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived at the heart of the British Empire.

He had come from Gujarat in India to study Law.

He was 18 years old and keen to make the right impression.

He tried to really be an English gentleman.

He tried to learn the violin, ballroom dancing, to learn elocution.

He was trying to be a fashionable young man.

Gandhi was soon to pay a visit to one of London's top society photographers, Elliot and Fry.

They took this photograph of him, looking, as he said himself,

"the perfect dandy".

Qualifying as a barrister in 1893,

Gandhi went to South Africa to work in his uncle's law firm.

Photographed again in 1906, he still has the appearance

of a professional western gentleman.

But his experience of racism and injustice in South Africa

had already started to bring about a change in his thinking.

Travelling with a first-class ticket on a train to Durban,

Gandhi was told to sit in third class because of the colour of his skin.

When he refused, he was thrown off the train at the next station.

When Gandhi was pushed out of the train at Maritzburg,

it was the entire system that pushed him out, with all its fury.

And that was the time when Gandhi realised what he is up against.

Gandhi decided to put up a fight.

But he was already developing his doctrine of passive resistance,

pledging never to submit to an unfair law,

nor ever to resort to violence.

He said that no system of oppression can last

unless the oppressed co-operate,

therefore that system of cooperation has to be broken.

If all the Indians

stop co-operating and say, "Do your worst!" it can collapse in 24 hours.

Gandhi's first campaign was against the infamous Black Act of 1907,

which imposed compulsory registration on all Indians.

In protest, Gandhi urged them to join him in burning their registration certificates.

The Black Act was only temporarily suspended and Gandhi was imprisoned.

But he was firmly established as the leader of Indian protest in South Africa.

In 1913, Gandhi began the dramatic transformation of his image.

When British troops shot down a group of peaceful protestors,

he was outraged.

In disgust, he vowed to give up the trappings of Western society.

Dressed as an ordinary Indian,

in a long white smock and sandals, he posed defiantly for the press.

He has to fashion himself as a fighter and as a defier of some laws,

and yet a non-violent defier - he can't carry a gun, but he has to show some discipline.

Gandhi was using his image to deliver a simple message of solidarity with his people.

In return, they now named him "Mahatma" - "Great Soul".

This would be the first of many photo-opportunities that would later

help bring to an end two-and-a-half centuries of British rule in India.

At the age of 45, Gandhi returned home to continue his struggle against the British.

The year was 1915.

When he disembarked in Bombay, huge crowds were waiting

to greet the great international lawyer and campaigner.

But Gandhi wasn't dressed like a man of power and influence.

He was wearing the clothes of a simple peasant from his home state of Gujarat.

After 26 years away,

Gandhi found India greatly changed.

He saw an enormous amount of poverty,

wretchedness,

exploitation,

Hindu-Muslim violence.

He also sees fear, how the ordinary Indians shiver in the presence of a white man.

On the 13th April, 1919,

British troops opened fire

on a peaceful demonstration in Amritsar in the Punjab.

Nearly 400 men, women and children were shot down in the massacre.

Gandhi was devastated.

How can we compromise, he asked, while the British Lion shakes its gory claws in our face?

He comes to the conclusion that he has got to mobilise the Indian people.

The British were not going to go away unless they were pressurised into doing that.

Gandhi's response to the violence and oppression was the last thing

the British expected.

The cotton growers of India were facing poverty and starvation

because of the British monopoly on cloth production.

Gandhi urged all Indians to boycott British-made clothes,

and make their own, using a traditional spinning wheel.

An activity which looks very archaic has this profoundly transformative significance...

A simple gesture with profoundly revolutionary implications.

Photographs of the emblematic spinning wheel

began to circulate all over India intensifying the campaign.

In August 1921, Gandhi went further.

At a public burning of foreign cloth,

he discarded his own long white smock and cap, and burnt them in front of the crowd.

When he burned the clothes, he also burned a system which was supporting it.

And suddenly everywhere people would fight shy of coming out

in western clothes and anything which was manufactured abroad.

The British were uncertain how to respond to the protest.

There was no law against spinning or burning cloth.

Nonetheless, Gandhi was arrested and imprisoned.

When he was released a few weeks later, he turned up

at a high-society garden party, wearing nothing but a loincloth.

A Bombay press photographer ensured that the latest

transformation of Gandhi's image would be seen all over India.

Over the next ten years, millions of Indians joined him in his peaceful campaign for home rule.

But the British were ruthless in crushing any form of protest.

Gandhi then decided to create a photo-opportunity that would attract

the attention of the whole world.

On 15th March 1930, Gandhi set out on a high-profile protest march.

The British had raised tax on the manufacture

of a basic human necessity - salt.

Without the means to make salt, countless Indians faced death.

Gandhi marched for 22 days through the villages of Gujarat.

His destination -

the Arabian Sea.

Thousands came out to watch him pass.

Hindus marching side by side with Muslims...

a powerful symbol of Gandhi's dream of Indian unity and independence.

He had a remarkable sense of a drama.

He could see a situation, immediately grasp its dramatic potential,

and then tease it out and build on it.

To ensure maximum publicity for the cause, Gandhi had sent word

to international journalists and photographers.

The Americans were enormously excited and the Chicago Tribune in particular

sent several photographers here to take pictures of Gandhi.

On the morning of the 6th of April, the march reached the shore.

Gandhi bent down to pick up a handful of natural salt.

It was one of the most simple yet provocative photo-opportunities in history.

The whole of the world held its breath.

What is going to happen?

How will this man act? He has started a drama. How will this drama end?

The photograph plays this enormous role of being a catalyst.

And the photographs were of great significance in embarrassing the British government.

The whole of India is set on fire.

The moment enough Indians

realised that they were not going to cooperate in British rule,

that was the beginning, you might say, of the end.

The British faltered.

For the first time, they agreed to begin talks about the possibility of granting independence.

In August 1931, Gandhi set off for England.

This photograph was taken as he approached Dover.

Still dressed as an Indian peasant, he was about to begin negotiations

with one of the most powerful nations in the world.

In London, he turned down state hospitality and stayed instead in the slums of the East End.

Whatever the result of the mission

that brought me to London,

I know that I shall carry with me

the pleasantest memories

of my stay in the midst

of the poor people of East London.

Eagerly followed by the press, he was treated like an exotic celebrity.

He went to 10 Downing Street,

met the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Charlie Chaplin.

Invited to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the King and Queen,

he turned up still dressed in his loincloth.

When he was asked after the meeting why he hadn't dressed

more elaborately, he said,

"His Majesty had more than enough for both of us."

With photographers still in tow, he also visited

the cotton mills of Lancashire, which had once thrived

on the British cloth manufacturing monopoly.

There is a photograph with these women in Lancashire -

that was a courageous move of him to go to people whose jobs probably his movement in India had taken.

And yet they were willing to support him because they felt that he was fighting

for some understandable rights.

The talks with the British government were stalling.

But they were wary of offending the man who Churchill would later describe as "the half-naked fakir".

In an act of diplomacy, the Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, commissioned a photographic portrait of Gandhi.

Once again, he made his way to the studios of photographers Elliot and Fry,

43 years after his first visit.

This shy student, eager to be a fashionable young man,

now is the leader of this great rebellion

and he's transformed his personality,

he's transformed his image, he's transformed his goals.

And yet he retains, this respect for, warmth for Britain,

where he had his education and where he had his friends and with whom he had some good fights.

Back in India, Gandhi was now the symbolic leader of his people.

His photographs were reproduced everywhere -

in newspapers, on calendars and posters.

But in 1932, he turned away from the camera

and withdrew from the frontline of the struggle with the British.

In the calm of an ashram,

a spiritual retreat, Gandhi began his hardest campaign yet -

trying to settle the differences between his own people.

Even harder than fighting the British was creating unity and friendship

between Hindus and Muslims, who had had a history of mistrust.

Gandhi felt that all of India had to be united for independence,

but also out of humanitarian impulses, he was appalled

by the way the caste Hindus treated the untouchables.

It was far worse than any racialism in South Africa.

For the next five years, Gandhi dedicated himself to educating and uniting the people of India.

He lived a simple life of fasting and prayer and was reluctant to be photographed.

But in 1936, his great nephew, Kanu Gandhi

asked for permission to document his daily routine in the ashram.

Gandhi agreed to be photographed, but would never pose, nor allow the use of artificial lighting.

The results are some of the most relaxed and informal photographs

of Gandhi ever taken.

Kanu Gandhi's pictures were taken when Gandhi was relatively at peace,

with his very close family members or his very close associates,

so they show Gandhi as a private person, a family person -

Gandhi in his quieter moments.

With the outbreak of the WWII, Gandhi seized the opportunity

to further the struggle for independence.

In August 1942, he warned the British to "Quit India",

and urged Indians to "do or die" -

to wage one last struggle to win independence, or die in the attempt.

Within 24 hours he was arrested.

But the British were caught off guard by acts of sabotage on railway stations, telegraph offices

and government buildings.

The British were beginning to lose their grip on India.

By the end of the war, a new world order was emerging.

Independence for India was a real possibility.

Life Magazine commissioned the American photojournalist,

Margaret Bourke-White, to get the story behind the man who had brought the British Empire to its knees.

A determined professional, Bourke-White would go anywhere

and stop at nothing to get the picture she wanted...

but she'd never come across anyone quite like Gandhi.

"Having thought of Mahatma Gandhi as a symbol of simplicity,

"I was a bit surprised to find I had to go through several secretaries

"to get permission to photograph him."

That was the silence day of Gandhi, so I said, "He won't be able to talk."

She said he may be observing silence,

but I am not going to talk to him,

but I would like to come and see the place where he is living.

Bourke-White arrived two hours earlier than arranged.

But instead of being taken to meet Gandhi, she was told that she would first have to learn to spin.

Finally, only when it was deemed she could spin well enough,

she was allowed to begin taking photographs.

But she was told that Gandhi insisted on natural light.

The camera flash would interrupt his reading.

"I found the inside of the hut to be even darker than I had anticipated.

"But when my eyes became accustomed,

"there sat the Mahatma -

"a spidery figure. Could this be the man who was leading his people to freedom?"

Bourke-White pleaded with Gandhi and he finally agreed to allow her three flashbulbs.

The first flash failed in the heat and humidity.

On the second, she forgot to pull the plate.

Finally, the third bulb worked.

She had her picture.

After more persuasion,

Gandhi relented and allowed her to take some more.

Despite the impossible conditions, Bourke-White created some of the most haunting images of a man

whose dreams were about to be realised.

Those photographs are, I think, quite remarkable,

because they capture...almost, they capture the inner man

in his dilemmas, his difficulties, his persistence.

In April 1946, the photos were seen by the three million readers

of Life Magazine.

Gandhi and Bourke-White,

who he jokingly referred to as his "torturer",

would later become friends.

'At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps,

'India will awake to light and freedom.'

On the 15th August 1947, India was granted independence

from the British Empire.

Gandhi had finally realized his dream.

But his vision of unity was not to be.

In the negotiations, the sub-continent was divided into two countries - India and Pakistan.

The majority of the Muslims felt they would prefer to have a separate country,

so that was a matter of deep disappointment and sorrow to him,

as it was a kind of failure for him.

Because he had all his life tried to keep India united.

Within hours of independence, there was more division and bloodshed,

as riots broke out between Hindu and Muslim factions across both countries.

Gandhi now began a series of highly publicised fasts,

threatening to starve himself to death unless the violence came to an end.

The ferocious blood-letting seemed unstoppable.

But word of Gandhi's protest travelled quickly and,

on 18th January 1948, the fighting ceased.

It was hailed as a miracle.

12 days later, on 30th January,

Gandhi was walking to his daily prayer meeting at Birla House in Delhi.

The crowd was hardly about 200-250 people.

This man came forward. I saw him coming forward.

He wanted to just bow down.

And at that time he shot from point blank range, hardly about three feet.

Gandhi had been mortally wounded,

shot down by a fellow Hindu, who felt betrayed by Gandhi's support for the Muslims.

He was lifted by six or seven people, taken inside, he was bleeding.

He was laid on the floor and people started crowding round him.

Bourke-White had interviewed Gandhi only hours earlier.

Now she pushed her way back to the house.

"Thousands of people were straining wildly for one last look at their Mahatma.

"I could hardly reach the door, but the guards recognized me and helped me through."

Bourke-White felt it was her duty to get a photograph of Gandhi's body.

But someone seized her camera and tore out the film.

She was ordered to leave the building.

The celebrated French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson

was also in Delhi at the time.

He too rushed to document the tragedy and somehow, in all the confusion,

succeeded in getting the shot that had eluded Bourke-White.

That night, he also photographed Nehru,

the new President of India, as he delivered his tribute to Gandhi.

-NEHRU:

-The light has gone out of our lives,

and there is darkness everywhere.

And I do not quite know what to tell you, and how to say it.

Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him,

the Father of the Nation, is no more.

Gandhi's funeral drew over two million mourners.

His body was decked with flowers, and covered with the new flag

of the free India.

It was drawn over five miles to the cremation ground.

As they set fire to the funeral pyre, Cartier-Bresson was lost in the crowd.

Normally so keen to take the perfectly composed photograph,

he simply passed his camera up to someone with a higher vantage point.

Cartier-Bresson's photographs of Gandhi's funeral

were published all over the world.

Images of an independent nation

united at last,

in mourning.

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast - 2005

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