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The Making of the Mahatma

1996 film by Shyam Benegal

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ12125978 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Making of the Mahatma is a 1996 biographical film directed by Shyam Benegal, about the early life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (also known as Mahatma Gandhi) during his 21 years in South Africa. The film is based upon the book The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma by Fatima Meer, and was an international co-production between India and South Africa.

Cast

Rajit Kapoor as barrister Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Pallavi Joshi as Kasturba Gandhi

Paul Slabolepszy as Jan Smuts

Sean Cameron Michael as Warder

Charles Pillai as Thambi Naidoo

Keith Stevenson as Rustomjee (also in Akayla)

Lieb Bester as Boer coach leader

Peter J. Elliott as Jail superintendent, Pretoria

Awards

1996: National Film Award for Best Actor – Rajit Kapur as Gandhi

1996: National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English

See also

List of artistic depictions of Mahatma Gandhi

External links

The Making of the Mahatma at IMDb

Review from Hinduism Today

Desai, M. S. M. (6 October 1996). "Benegal's Mahatma makes a different history". The Indian Express. Archived from the original on 26 May 1997. Retrieved 2 October 2019.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Making of the Mahatma” is 1996 film by Shyam Benegal. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Making, Mahatma and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996, 1997, 2019—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1996-01-01. For this dossier, Making, Mahatma and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1996 film by Shyam Benegal” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12125978. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1997 and 2019.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Making of the Mahatma”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Making of the Mahatma primary sources, The Making of the Mahatma archive and Making research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Making of the Mahatma”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Making of the Mahatma” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.