Bollywood film is a hit-- and so, again, is Gandhi  Comedy
inspires new generation of Indians to embrace philosophy of
spiritual leader  October 30, 2006|By Kim Barker, Tribune
foreign correspondent  NEW DELHI — With his round glasses,
homespun white cloth and walking stick, the father of India has
hardly been fashionable with the jet-setting, jeans-wearing
urban Indian youth of today.  But a new Bollywood movie, a
comedy about a thug, a radio disc jockey and Mahatma Gandhi, has
turned into one of the biggest hits of the year and made Gandhi
suddenly hip.  Inspired by the hit movie, Indians are
increasingly embracing his philosophy, staging non-violent
protests, starting Web sites, handing out roses to enemies and
putting on peaked white caps from the Gandhi era. His face beams
from trendy T-shirts. Bumper stickers proclaim his pithy
aphorisms, such as "Truth is God."  "We forgot that man all
these years, and everything went haywire," said Varsha Das,
director of the Gandhi National Museum, a dusty repository