Gandhi Page #59

GOVERNMENT BUILDING - KARACHI - EXTERIOR - DAY

On a platform in the foreground Jinnah and a British

plenipotentiary. A band plays the new Pakistani National

Anthem loudly and there is the roar of a tremendous crowd as

the white, green with white crescent, flag of Pakistan is

raised on the flagpole.

THE ASHRAM - EXTERIOR - DAY

Silence. The little flagpole is empty, the rope dangling,

flapping loosely down the pole.

Gandhi sits on the porch of his bungalow, spinning. The hum

of the spinning wheel. Inside we can just see Mirabehn,

spinning too. But apart from that, he is alone; the whole

ashram seems deserted. We hear the sound of a bell on one of

the goats, fairly distant.

THE PATH TO THE ASHRAM - EXTERIOR - DAY

Featuring Kallenbach. He is taking the goat and tethering it

near the path of the ashram. He stills the bell with his

hand. As he ties it the camera angle widens and we see

Margaret Bourke-White sitting on the grass, watching

Kallenbach and looking off toward Gandhi's bungalow.

BOURKE-WHITE

Aren't you being a little

overprotective?

Kallenbach looks at her. Her tone criticizes more than his

stilling the goat's bell.

KALLENBACH:

Tomorrow. Tomorrow photograph him.

BOURKE-WHITE

I came all this way because I believed

the picture of Independence Day was

of him here alone.

Kallenbach stands and looks across at her, judging, then

appealing to her humanity.

KALLENBACH:

It is violence, and the fear of

violence, that have made today what

it is... Give him the dignity of his

grief.

Bourke-White grabs a clump of grass, twists it free, and

sighs. She tosses the grass vaguely at the goat.

BOURKE-WHITE

And while we're sitting here feeding

goats, what will happen to all the

Muslims in India and the Hindus in

Pakistan?

Kallenbach stops, staring absently at the ground ahead, then

KALLENBACH:

Gandhi will pray for them...

OPEN TERRAIN AND RAILROAD - EXTERIOR - DAY

The camera is high (helicopter) and moving and from its

position we meet and then pass over an immense column of

refugees -- ten, twenty abreast -- moving down one side of

the railroad track toward camera. Women, children, the sick,

the aged, all burdened with bedding, utensils, household

treasures, useless bric-a-brac and trudging with them every

type of cart, wagon, rickshaw, pulled by donkey, camel, bike,

oxen. It stretches endlessly to the horizon. Tiny green,

white and saffron flags here and there indicate that it is a

Hindu column and spotted through it we see people in fresh

bandages, some on stretchers, sticking out like radioactive

tracers in the huge artery of frightened humanity.

And the camera lifts and tilts, slowly swinging to the

opposite direction, and as it does, reveals another vast

column across the track, several yards away, moving in the

opposite direction: veiled women in purdah, the crescent

flag of Muslim Pakistan here and there. As the camera levels

and speeds along it, we see that this column too reaches to

the horizon, that it too carries its wounded.

An unbelievable flood of desperate humanity.

EXTREME CLOSE SHOT

The sound of the vast refugee column. A woman's arms cradle

a baby in swaddling. Blood has seeped through the swaddling

in three or four places, some of it dried. Flies buzz around

it. And suddenly we hear the woman's sobs and she rocks the

baby and we know it has stopped moving, stopped breathing,

and a male hand gently touches the back of the baby, checking,

and the camera pans up to the face of a man.

Again in extreme close shot so we cannot tell whether they

are Hindu or Muslim. And the man's eyes knot, and he swings

out of shot as he runs in fury and rage at the other column.

LONG SHOT - HIGH

The two columns -- and a howl of hate and grief! And the

camera sweeps to where men are running at each other across

the track, some already fighting. Knives, pangas, hatchets;

women screaming and running; a besieged wagon tipped.

Another angle. And as the fighting grows more fierce streams

of men from each column run back to partake, but the bulk of

the two columns hurries off, scrambling, running, some leaving

their bundles, fleeing the meleé in terror.

HINDU/MUSLIM RIOT SEQUENCE - SEVERAL LOCATIONS - DAY/NIGHT

A Muslim pulled through broken glass in an urban market shop./

Night:
a Hindu temple daubed with blood, the bodies of women

and children strewn before it; screams, the sound of

fighting./ Mud and straw houses burning, figures running

through them./ A city street: a truck crashes into a barricade

of rickshaws and bales, and is set upon by a swarm of knife-

and panga-bearing men. From the back of the truck opponents

with swords and clubs leap into battle.

NEHRU'S OFFICE - INTERIOR - DAY

Chaos. It and the adjoining office have been made into

something like operations rooms. Military and civilian aides

move back and forth. Telephones at work everywhere. A huge

map on the wall is constantly having data changed by people

receiving messages there.

Nehru is glancing at a telex message; he turns and gives it

back to the military aide who's given it to him.

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