The biographical film covers Gandhi's life from a defining moment in 1893, as he is thrown off a South African train for being in a whites-only compartment and concludes with his assassination and funeral in 1948.

It was praised for providing a historically accurate portrayal of the life of Gandhi, the Indian independence movement and the deleterious results of British colonisation on India.

Gandhi responds with numerous peaceful demonstrations against the new law's unjust nature, and Jan Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa, eventually orders his arrest.

Anglican clergyman Charles Freer Andrews joins his mission, and Vince Walker, an American journalist from the New York Times, takes special interest in him.

Cordially invited to the Indian National Congress in 1915, Gandhi meets its leaders: Sardar Patel, a young Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is advocating self rule for India, as well as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who becomes his mentor.

While a group of people listen to speeches about freedom, General Reginald Dyer orders his soldiers to fire upon them unawares, committing the Amritsar massacre.

Devastated, Gandhi holds a fast unto death, causing Hindus to stand down and Huseyn Suhrawardy to call upon Muslims to stop fighting.

In 1952, Gabriel Pascal secured an agreement with the Prime Minister of India (Jawaharlal Nehru) to produce a film of Gandhi's life.

[4] In 1962 Attenborough was contacted by Motilal Kothari, an Indian-born civil servant working with the Indian High Commission in London and a devout follower of Gandhi.

He was able to meet prime minister Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi through a connection with Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India.

Co-producer Rani Dube persuaded prime minister Indira Gandhi to provide the first $10 million from the National Film Development Corporation of India, chaired by D. V. S. Raju at that time, on the back of which the remainder of the funding was finally raised.

Screenwriter John Briley had introduced him to Jake Eberts, the chief executive at the new Goldcrest production company that raised approximately two-thirds of the film's budget.

Among the few who took a more negative view of the film, historian Lawrence James called it "pure hagiography"[30] while anthropologist Akhil Gupta said it "suffers from tepid direction and a superficial and misleading interpretation of history.

"[31] Also Indian novelist Makarand R. Paranjape has written that "Gandhi, though hagiographical, follow a mimetic style of film-making in which cinema, the visual image itself, is supposed to portray or reflect 'reality'".

Schickel viewed Attenborough's directorial style as having "a conventional handsomeness that is more predictable than enlivening," but this "stylistic self-denial serves to keep one's attention fastened where it belongs: on a persuasive, if perhaps debatable vision of Gandhi's spirit, and on the remarkable actor who has caught its light in all its seasons.

"[13] The movie "deals with a subject of great importance... with a mixture of high intelligence and immediate emotional impact... [and] Ben Kingsley... gives what is possibly the most astonishing biographical performance in screen history."

Kroll stated that the screenplay's "least persuasive characters are Gandhi's Western allies and acolytes" such as an English cleric and an American journalist, but that "Attenborough's 'old-fashioned' style is exactly right for the no-tricks, no-phony-psychologizing quality he wants.

"[13] Furthermore, Attenborough mounts a powerful challenge to his audience by presenting Gandhi as the most profound and effective of revolutionaries, creating out of a fierce personal discipline a chain reaction that led to tremendous historical consequences.

At a time of deep political unrest, economic dislocation and nuclear anxiety, seeing "Gandhi" is an experience that will change many minds and hearts.

[13] According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications there was "a cycle of film and television productions which emerged during the first half of the 1980s, which seemed to indicate Britain's growing preoccupation with India, Empire and a particular aspect of British cultural history".

Take the episode when the newly arrived Gandhi is ejected from a first-class railway carriage at Pietermaritzburg after a white passenger objects to sharing space with a "coolie" (an Indian indentured labourer).

He petitioned the authorities in the port city of Durban, where he practised law, to end the indignity of making Indians use the same entrance to the post office as blacks, and counted it a victory when three doors were introduced: one for Europeans, one for Asiatics and one for Natives.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Director Richard Attenborough is typically sympathetic and sure-handed, but it's Ben Kingsley's magnetic performance that acts as the linchpin for this sprawling, lengthy biopic.