production, for here it is the masses feeding upon themselves, their own history. It is obvious that this would have an immense utility to any ruling class. In India today, with the growth ofregionalist reaction threatening the nationalist bourgeoisie with increasing belligerence, more than ever in the past does the latter need a resurgence of nationalist values. For a long time now, the all-India commercial cinema in Hindi has been effective in keeping regionalist sentiments down. (It is interesting to see how in the South it is the regional cinema that is at the forefront of separatist movements, and how N.T. Rama Rao and M.G. Ramachand-ran have used this.) But there has never been the expertise required to raise nationalism above its naive populist form in mass-media, and peddle it in the name of 'art5. It is here that Gandhi has made what could be the first forijial breakthrough. Before it appears that one is possibly seeing too much of prior intention behind all this, one must add that Attenborough is certainly not either intelligent enough, or good enough as a filmmaker, to have worked out his biases consciously. But one must add that it is just his tribe that would enter into such 'contracts' with Third-World ruling classes, of 'purchasing' a major nationalist myth and 'reselling' it to them in renovated form. The manner in which he has claimed authority to intervene in that'history by proxy of personal acquaintance with its principals - he dedicates the film to Nehru, Mountbatten and Motilal Kothari — or that one instance when, denied the right to shoot in the Rashtrapati Bhavan by the then President, he s^id that the first Indian President Dr Rajendra Prasad had personally invited him to shoot in the Bhavan, and the statement went conspicuously uncontradicted, all this is a clear indication of the understanding between him and the Indian government. Far from a Griffith, a Ford or a Welles\(whom he would like to consider his predecessors), one cannot imagine even a Huston or a Lean stopping to such depths. One can only conclude with the hope that the very mediocrity that has led to such uses of cinema will itself betray the intentions of its sponsors. As happened during the Emergency, too much of a good thing can also boomerang on the men benefitting from it. ifoumal of Arts and Id^as 41