Film-maker Bharatbala, who has embarked on a 1,000 short film challenge that involves untold stories about India, has released an eight-and-a-half minute film, The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi , on the occasion of his 72nd death anniversary on Thursday. It has been posted on YouTube.
Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Bharatbala said he wanted to tell the story of Gandhi’s assassination through two people — his personal secretary Kalyanam, 98, and Sarla Mehta, 91, who lived at the Sabarmati Ashram from the age of six — who were there at the scene.
“The episode is well known, but I told myself: let me find people who were closest to Gandhi. I found five people but realised that these two could actually recount what happened on that day in first person... I knew that the story was coming together,” he said.
Mr. Bharatbala said that he had found Ms. Mehta and Mr. Kalyanam in many archival photographs of that fateful day. “It is one thing to read about it on Wikipedia, but it is worth our time to listen to them reminiscing about the day. They both knew Gandhiji so well,” he said. Did the two know each other? “It is possible as they both lived in the ashram at the same time but I didn’t want to connect the dots,” he clarified.
The film-maker said three stories that didn’t make it into this film would be released as separate films.
“The other three people got left out because they weren’t connected to January 30 but their stories are interesting — for example, one man walked from Bhubaneswar to Sevagram in Wardha because Gandhiji had called him,” he said. Mr. Bharatbala is currently working on developing a full length feature and has already completed 65 films out of the planned 1,000 short films.
