"Mahatma versus Gandhi" on March 27

VADODARA, March 21: Highly acclaimed English play Mahatma versus Gandhi, written by Ajit Dalvi and directed by Feroz Khan, will be staged...

VADODARA, March 21: Highly acclaimed English play Mahatma versus Gandhi, written by Ajit Dalvi and directed by Feroz Khan, will be staged in the city on March 27. The play will be presented by the United Way of Baroda in association with The Platform’.

Based on the Dinkar Joshi’s Gujarati novel Prakashno Padchhayo, the play looks at Mahatma Gandhi, one of history’s most famous figures, through the prism of a tortured and anguished relationship with the eldest of his four sons, Harilal, who died a lonely death battling with tuberculosis in a Mumbai hospital barely five months after his father’s assasination.

Castigated as the black-sheep of the family, Harilal set himself up to sell British-made textiles just when his father was urging a boycott of British cloth in favour of homespun cottons. He fell afoul of the law more than once for fraud, converted from Hinduism to Islam and back again, descended into chronic alcoholism and sexual philandering in the red-light districts of Mumbai and Delhi and was banished in a drunken stupor from the deathbed of Kasturba.

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Through Harilal’s miseries, the play casts a light on Gandhi, and how the qualities that served him as a political leader — asceticism, single-mindedness, self-righteousness — made him obstinate, didactic and unfeeling as a husband and father.

Boman Irani plays the role of Mahatma Gandhi with Jayati Bhatia portraying Kasturba. Feroz Khan is Harilal and Nadine Naidoo plays his wife Gulab. The play will staged at the C C Mehta Auditorium, M S University, Pratapgunj at 6.50 pm. Passes are available at the United Way of Baroda, Federation of Gujarat Industries Building, R C Dutt Road.