Starting this October, Modi government will showcase ‘Gandhigiri’ to the world through a movie

NEW DELHI: Starting this October, in the 150th birth anniversary celebration year of Mahatma Gandhi, the Narendra Modi government will showcase ‘Gandhigiri’ to the world through a blockbuster movie.

The government is buying the screening rights of Rajkumar Hirani’s ‘Lage Raho Munna Bhai’ movie, the second in the series of ‘Munna Bhai’ movies made by the director in 2006 with actor Sanjay Dutt and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

The movie, which showed Gandhi appearing before Dutt to show him the ideal way of living, will be screened by almost all Indian embassies abroad for foreign audiences and will be dubbed or sub-titled in various languages such as English, French, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Portugese and Mandarin.


In 2009, the UPA government had procured the rights of AR Rahman’s hit song, ‘Jai Ho’ from the 2008-year movie Slumdog Millionaire for its election campaign after Rahman won an Oscar for the song.

The ‘Lage Raho Munna Bhai’ movie popularised a ‘Gandhigiri’ theme in which Gandhi appears as a spirit before a don played by Dutt and guides him on the ‘correct’ way of life with principles of honesty, selflessness and non-violence. The film won four national awards and was the first one to be screened at the United Nations.

The Modi government is now looking to buy the screening rights of the movie from its film distributors. “The film is required for screenings abroad on non-commercial/non-profit/non-exclusive basis for promotion of Indian cinema abroad and also for holding film festivals/film weeks through Indian missions/posts abroad,” as per a government proposal that has been reviewed by ET. The distributors have been asked to provide dubbing and subtitling rights of the film in all foreign languages, with cue sheets in Hindi.

Hirani could not be contacted for a comment on the story.

The screenings are expected to begin from October by Indian embassies abroad. This is apparently a part of the wide-scale events been planned by the Modi government starting October 2 to launch the 150th birth celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi, for which a 125-member national committee has been set up under the chairmanship of the President of India.

The panel also has nine international members such as former Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon, and Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and the former US Vice-President Al Gore.