How others will see it. Gandhi was released to great critical acclaim. It won a bucket full of Oscars, winning in every major category where it had a chance (Best Actress wasn't in the cards). Gandhi won for a number of reasons. It had a large budget, an enormous cast with hundreds of thousands of extras, and it helped assuage white guilt over any complicity in the treatment of India. A good script and a director committed to the cause helped as well, as did the addition of respected British and American actors in small roles. You'll recognize John Gielgud, Martin Sheen, John Mills, and Candice Bergen. "Cheers" mailman John Ratzenberger shows up as well, but he's dubbed to efface that pesky American accent.
How I felt about it. The cultural impact of Gandhi was to revive the memory of a forgotten hero, a man with human physical frailties but seemingly without any of its vices. As Gandhi is presented here, he can be convicted only of idealism. It is a thin line to walk between civil resistance and anarchy. The most educated, restrained, and selfless among us can adhere to the thin line. The rest of us are too readily manipulated by those eager to acquire power for selfish (or even evil) purposes.
Gandhi believes that unrepresentative rule, in this case the British occupiers, can be repudiated without opening Pandora's box of sectarian rifts. His mistake is a belief that the truth will conquer. The truth is that we are humans first, and only secondly a member of a religious or geographical sect. But there is more than one truth. It is another truth that men will always distrust their counterparts from a different sect. The truth will indeed conquer, but all too often it is the wrong truth that does so, that from the dark side of human nature.
As the three-hour-plus film labors to its conclusion, Gandhi finally recognizes the error of his ways. It isn't important whether your leader is British or Indian. It is important to fight injustice. Injustice could have been fought without the extreme of displacing the British government. Since the British were to leave sooner or later, it would have been better for Gandhi to nurture sect leaders more interested in national unity than the lion's share of the spoils.
As the British weaken in the face of Indian resistance, chaos erupts, and Gandhi resorts to a personal hunger strike to atone for his sin of having helped cause it. His hunger strike manages to close Pandora's box, but it will inevitably open again. It is most likely to re-open when agitation against the government is resumed, even when that agitation is intended to be completely non-violent.
I've discussed Gandhi the political scientist instead of Gandhi the film, although the spirit of the film is the philosophy of Gandhi. As moviemaking craft, Gandhi treats its subject with perhaps too much reverence. And his wife too readily accepts her role as part-time latrine cleaner. The differences between Gandhi and other Indian political leaders may have been sharper than seen here. The film is also handicapped since it depicts Indian history, yet is financed by the British and is targeted to a British audience. Nuances must be lost, and the (sometimes racist) tenor of British rule is softened.