British actor Tanveer Ghani is the latest actor to portray Jawaharlal Nehru on the screen. Ghani will play the freedom fighter and independent India’s first prime minister in Gurinder Chadha’s upcoming Viceroy House, which explores the domestic lives of Louis and Edwina Mountbatten during the Partition in 1947. Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson play the Mountbatten couple. Ghani previously appeared as Mahatma Gandhi in the British play Drawing the Line in 2013.
Will Ghani pass the Roshan Seth test? The resemblance between the actor trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Theatre and the statesman is fleeting at first, but then there is the nose, the manner and the body language. Once Seth slips into the white kurta and pyjama and covers his full head of hair with the trademark Congress Party white cap, the resemblance only increases.
When Shyam Benegal directed his landmark television adaptation of Nehru’s The Discovery of India for Doordarshan in 1988, Seth was his choice to play the author of the tribute to India’s heritage, culture value system and diverse philosophies.Seth, however dismissed his work in Discovery of India in an interview to Outlook magazine in 1995, saying that in general, acting in Indian was “a matter of affecting costumes and spouting lines”.
Nehru was played by Dalip Tahil for Benegal’s Samvidhan, a 10-part mini-series for Rajya Sabha TV on the making of the Indian Constitution. Tahil also played Nehru in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013).
The task of playing one of the giants of pre- and post-independent India in Ketan Mehta’s biopic on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel fell on Benjamim Gilani. Sardar (1993) stars Paresh Rawal as the Iron Man of India. Gilani isn’t quite as effective as the great statesman, and Seth casts a long shadow over Gilani’s performance.
After Seth, who? The quest for an effective Nehru remains unsuccessful. In Rajkumar Santoshi’s The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) and the ABP News series Pradhanmantri (2013), Saurabh Dubey plays Nehru. Hosted by filmmaker and actor Shekhar Kapur, the series uses dramatic reconstruction, interviews and archival footage to depict key events in Indian political history through 13 prime ministers.
Indian blood is not a requirement to essay one of the most celebrated sons of the soil. British thespian Ian Richardson plays Nehru with an “Indian accent” in the television series Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy (1986), while Robert Ashby portrays him in Jamil Dehlavi’s biopic Jinnah. (English actor Christopher Lee plays the founder of Pakistan.)
No actor stepped into Nehru’s large shoes in the Raj Kapoor production Ab Dilli Door Nahin (1957). The movie is about Ratan, a boy who travels to the capital with a petition for the prime minister for the release of his falsely implicated father. Nehru is depicted through stock footage, and Ratan’s handover of the letter after a series of contrivances is shown off screen in the movie’s climax. When it comes to Nehru, mere suggestion appears to be enough to convey the strength of his personality and influence.
