The notion of selflessness and the academy awards

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi guidelines plaque

Some news are downright disturbing like  a son marrying his mother. Others give you a good insight into happenings in far away lands. For example on the 26th of February, the Senegalese would go to the election polls to ‘elect’ a president. There is a  need to reduce the variants of democracy in the world. What is the use of a democratic system that does not follow the spirit of freedom and civil liberties. Senegal gained its independence from France in 1960. The first post colonial president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, ruled from 1960 to 1980. The second president, Abdou Diouf, ruled from 1981 to 2000. The incumbent, Abdoulaye Wade,estimated to be 86 years old has ruled since 2000. He is running for a third consecutive term (a similar move from Olusegun Obasanjo was strongly opposed in 2007). A term in Senegal is seven years (a similar move is being hatched by Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria). After more than 50 years of democratic rule, the oppressed people  have not seen the dividends of democracy. They want change. But is change for its own sake enough? We can only hope that the violence experienced in the previous months subside and the elections being observed by the international media is free and fair to a large extent. Although, these may just be wishful thinking.

On the same day, the academy awards celebrate the movies with its 84th edition hosted by Billy Crystal at the Kodak center in Los Angeles. I certainly would not try to predict the winners but I would like to blog about the best picture of 55th edition held in 1983. I saw Gandhi recently and it is the best film I have seen in years.

The movie begins with the filmmakers explaining their approach to the problem of filming Gandhi’s complex life story:

“No man’s life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight, to include each event, each person who helped to shape a lifetime. What can be done is to be faithful in spirit to the record and to try to find one’s way to the heart of the man”

In other not to spoil it for people who will later want to see it, I will restraint myself from discussing the heart touching movie beyond this quote from Ben Kingsley who portrays Gandhi in the movie;

“An eye for an eye leaves the world whole world blind”

I would like to see such selfless Asian leaders like Mohandas Gandhi and Sun Yat-Sen ( I know him from Jackie Chan’s China 1911) being emulated by our political leader today especially in Africa and the middle east (most notably in Syria today where the Bashar Al-Assad led government continues to bomb its citizens into submission)were politics is seen to be all about greed, power and corruption in both totalitarian and democratic settings.

Marlon Brando was the second person to refuse an Oscar awarded for his performance in the Godfather in 1973 because of the way the movie industry treated Native Americans. Which actor do you think can take such a stand today for a cause they believe in?