Asha-Madison, the UW-Madison Indian Graduate Students Assocation (IGSA) and India Development Service (IDS) at Chicago co-organized the screening of The Making of the Mahatma, Shyam Benegal's film about Mahatma Gandhi's transformation in South Africa. The screening took place on Sunday 25 October 1998 at the Union Theatre in Memorial Union, UW-Madison and was co-sponsored by The Associated Students of Madison (ASM) and the UW-Madison Multicultural Council (MCC).

The film is based on the book The Apprenticeship of the Mahatma by South African writer Fatima Meer. It explores Mahatma Gandhi's experiments in colonial South Africa in using non-violence as a radical weapon in the struggle for human rights. Shot on picturesque locales in South Africa, the film brilliantly portrays the transformation of an ordinary man into a Mahatma (Great Soul). It provides an insight into the life of Mahatma Gandhi, who was one of the father figures of India's freedom struggle, and his experiments with truth. Directed by Shyam Benegal, the movie features Rajit Kapur as Gandhi and Pallavi Joshi as Gandhi's wife Kasturba.

Here are a few on-line reviews of the film:

• Santa Barbara International Film Festival
• The Peak, Simon Fraser University's student newspaper
• Hinduism Online

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