It isn’t easy for foreign film crews to get permission to shoot in India. Everyone from Christopher Nolan and Sam Mendes has had trouble getting the proper permits. But as it turns out, Indian bureaucracy has been causing hurdles for movie producers for years. Director Richard Attenborough was made to jump through hoops to gain access to the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, where he wanted to film scenes for his Oscar-winning film Gandhi. Starring Ben Kingsley in the central role, it remains the most popular film about the Mahatma.
Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, spent a significant amount of time at the Aga Khan Palace; it’s where she spent her last days after his assassination. In an interview with news agency PTI a decade ago, Shobhana Ranade, the then-secretary of the Gandhi National Memorial Society, recalled the conditions laid down before Attenborough by none other than former PM Morarji Desai, who was the chairman of the trust at the time. “Why do we need a ‘nakli’ (fake) Gandhi to portray the Mahatma?” the former PM was quoted as saying. He wasn’t in favour of a British man playing the Mahatma.
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It took Desai 10 days to agree to grant Attenborough permission to shoot at the Aga Khan Palace, but not before assigning the filmmaker a list of dos and don’ts. “We told him that consumption of alcohol and non-vegetarian food is strictly prohibited on the premises and the trustees had a zero tolerance policy towards those who violate these norms,” recalled Ranade. Attenborough accepted the conditions, and would pointedly summon Ranade to double-check that they aren’t living up to their promise. “He used to call me whenever they took their food during the shoots, playfully asking to inspect the stuff to ensure there was no alcohol or meat,” she said.
She praised Attenborough as ‘a very warm human being’, and said that he would regularly send her Christmas greetings. Attenborough died in 2014. Kingsley won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance, and the film received a total of 11 nominations at the Oscars. Additionally, it was also a box office success, grossing over $120 million worldwide.
Roshan Seth, Ben Kingsley, Alyque Padamsee in a still from Gandhi.
More recently, director Anurag Kashyap opened up about the difficulties that even someone as well-regarded as Nolan was put through for wanting to shoot in India. “You should some day talk to Christopher Nolan’s team about the problems they went through when they were trying to shoot Tenet in India. You’ll be shocked how he was treated. His equipment was held by customs. There are thousands of stories. Let’s stop bullsh***ing ourselves that there is a system that empowers cinema,” he said in an interview with Fever FM.
Before that, the former railways minister, Dinesh Trivedi, put forward several conditions to the production crew of the James Bond film Skyfall. Among them was having James Bond ‘sign up as a brand ambassador for Indian Railways’.
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