How Delhi became a film set

Delhi played a significant role in Gandhi, the Oscar-winning film by British filmmaker, Richard Attenborough. Parts of the movie were also shot in and around Mumbai, Patna and Pune. The film’s great many elaborate sets were rustled out by a dedicated team of carpenters, masons and draftsmen in a workshop at the Manor Hotel in south Delhi’s New Friends Colony. The costume designers charged with preparing thousands of dresses for the movie’s extras toiled equally hard a few miles away at the basement of the convention hall in central Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel, which also hosted the main crew of the movie, including director, Richard Attenborough, and lead actors, Ben Kingsley and Rohini Hattangadi.

Delhi and its surrounding areas were chosen to depict pivotal sites in the film. Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad was recreated near Faridabad in the national capital region. The sequence showing the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre was shot in the Capital. Roshanara Club in north Delhi was turned into Bihar’s Champaran Cricket Club. A small railway station beyond Gurugram called Garhi-harsaru became Pietermaritzburg station, the infamous backwater town in South Africa where Gandhi was thrown out of the first class railway carriage despite possessing a ticket.

Attended by President Zail Singh and Prime Minister India Gandhi, the film’s world premiere was held on November 30, 1982, at Chankaya theatre, a single-screen cinema that was razed 25 years later.

It’s now a luxury mall with a multiplex.