Gandhiji’s birthday had gained special significance this year. It wasn’t anything special except the fact that just a few weeks before this day there was a bollywood release that talked of Gandhian values. The values of truth and non violence that Gandhi advocated so strongly, that his personality seemed to epitomize the same. He always stood for it and yet he was pretty much forgotten and buried with his values. Suddenly the revival of the same courtesy bollywood.
As we talk of fragmentation and fewer viewers we also see mass media resulting in mass movements shaping opinions and ideologies. It’s happening more so as media becomes omnipresent at least in the bigger cities and town. So we all are served the same messages across channels at dinner table. And like food we are almost swallowing it , without chewing it , giving it any thought at all.
“Lagey Raho Munna Bhai” has suddenly made Gandhi relevant and contemporary, even timeless. To comment on the merits of the movie may not be correct as I haven’t seen it yet but what surprises me is how media is shaping us. Gandhi was there, his values have been known and yet it didn’t matter much hitherto. But the power of Bollywood is something else. It has been generating mass hysteria of late.
The message may be good or bad but I guess each one of us have a right to decide for ourselves. Or do we? Aren’t we influenced with the way information is provided to us? The right to free opinion also embodies within itself the right to free thought. But are my thoughts free really?
After watching show after show on Gandhigiri it is not out of free choice that I sit down to put my thoughts together about it. It is a compulsion to say something. I haven’t seen the movie and I had respected Gandhiji’s ideology irrespective of Munna bhai. And I am not against the use of bollywood for the same, just awestruck.
On Bapu’s bday I wonder what to say – salaam babu or salaam bollywood?
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