Friday, April 20, 2007, 3:30-5:30pm, Russell Weigley Room, 914 Gladfelter Hall
Abhijat Joshi, Otterbein College, Ohio
"Bollywood Films: What Would Gandhi Say?"

Co-sponsored with the Dissent in America series, the departments of Geography & Urban Studies and History, and Phi Alpha Theta.

Abhijat Joshi is a multi-lingual playwright, screenwriter, and a teacher of creative writing. Born and educated in Ahmedabad, India, he received his M.F.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, and is currently a professor of English at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio.

Joshi's first play A Shaft of Sunlight won the BBC World Service Playwriting Contest, was published in England, and performed
extensively in London and India. He has co-authored four full-length feature films that have been released worldwide. Abhijat has won every major Indian screenplay award this year for the Bollywood blockbuster Lage Raho Munnabhai—a comedy about a gangster who hallucinates that he can see Gandhi.

One of the most successful films in recent Indian cinema, Lage Raho Munnabhai has provoked renewed interest in Mahatma Gandhi in India to the extent that there has reputedly been a four hundred percent increase in the literature by and about Gandhi since the film was released in 2006. The film received four star reviews from the BBC and The Guardian. The Chicago Tribune called it “a phenomenon that has helped India rediscover Gandhi” and The Washington Post alleges that this film has made Gandhi a “pop icon.” Lage Raho Munnabhai was recently screened by invitation at the United Nations in New York.