New Delhi, Oct. 11 -- Nothing in Indian popular culture comes even close in reach and sway to Bollywood. But in the media celebration of Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary, there was very little on his influence on Hindi films. However, journalist Sanjay Suri's brilliant new book, A Gandhian Affair, shows us just how blind we have been to the astonishingly strong spell Gandhi cast over Bollywood. Suri offers startling, even revelatory, insights on his lasting impact. And the conclusions I reached (not part of the book) about our cinema and ourselves are not happy ones.
Of course, there have been movies based explicitly on his philosophy, from Do Ankhen Barah Haath to Lage Raho Munna Bhai, but Suri's focus is on the much less obvious....