I'd never seen the Richard Attenborough movie until this past weekend and finally had a chance to watch it. Ben Kingsley crushes the roll in the film but how accurate was the portrayal? Admittedly I don't know much about the separation of India from British rule, all of the underlying factors that had been building for centuries, etc., so whatever you guys would like to add would be appreciated.

He is the guy on the 10 Rupee note

He spun a lot of cloth on a little spinning wheel

Got his start in South Africa as a lawyer.

I will say that we tend to view British occupation of India as racist but generally benevolent to the people. After going there and listening to stories, there is some animosity toward the British. There was some cruelty to the people that gets swept under the rug. As a generality, the British governors in India were not "Top People."

It is a history movie and by definition it is very bad history. For example, the Muslim leader Jinna is not a good guy because he favored partition. Hundreds of thousands died before he was shown to be right and Ghandi mistaken

They also left out the more extreme examples of his asceticism

Entertaining intro to Indian history and the evils of Brit colonialism

My Sikh neighbour in LA told me that a lot of Indians are resentful of the British. He told me that those Indians are stupid because without the Brits, India wouldn't have schools or railroads.

I happened to vacation in Goa when it was Gandhi's birthday. On that one day every year, you can't buy alcohol anywhere in India. Luckily, I had a fridge in my room and was able to stock up on Kingfishers the day before.

I can't hear Gandhi without thinking of this Bloom County strip from April1983 ..

http://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/1983/4/10

Didn't he have a niece or other female relative sleep with with him ?

According to Wikipedia that's true and he did it with a couple of them to prove his mental strengths of celibacy. Even the girls said he never tried to do anything with them, but some of his followers and relatives loudly opposed it.

Not defending it, just replying to your question.

I saw an infant with The Story of My Experiments With Truth. It was simple to remove it from his grasp.