Mr. Mohan Rao was the Director of the Publications Division in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the early fifties, and the chief conceiver of the project to publish the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.
Mohan Rao, who headed Hind Kitabs in Bombay, had published books by eminent Indians like Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, D. G. Tendulkar and Humayun Kabir. Dr B. V. Keskar, who became the Information and Broadcasting Minister in 1952, asked him to come to Delhi and take charge of the Pub
When Richard Attenborough first thought of producing a film on Mahatma Gandhi, and sought the help of Government of India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked him to meet Mohan Rao, who by then had set up a sub-unit of the Publications Division called the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. It was
One Sunday, Mohan Rao called me to his house in Feroz Shah Road to meet a special guest. It turned out to be Richard Attenborough. He was served a pure vegetarian meal of rice, dal, sambhar, dahi and payasam. I could see Attenborough watching Mohan Rao eat with his hands, while he used a spoon.
Mohan Rao was fond of talking about Gandhiji. So, Attenborough sat through long hours of conversation about Gandhi's philosophy, life and thoughts. Attenborough had probably researched all this himself, but he attentively listened to a man who had seen all this first hand and read documents and lett
Several years later Mohan Rao, who by then had retired from the Publications Division, told me that Richard Attenborough was back in India and was keen on producing a film on Mahatma Gandhi. By then, several volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi had been published, and Mohan Rao himself
Attenborough had given Mohan Rao the film script and asked him for inputs. He brought the script to our home in R.K Puram in Delhi and we all poured over the script, probably the first film script any of us had read. Mohan Rao stayed in our house for weeks reading and re-reading the script, marking
Over the next few weeks, we learned that Mohan Rao had several discussions with Attenborough over some scenes in the manuscript, especially one in which there was an intimate scene between Gandhi and Kasturba. He told Attenborough that Indians would not be comfortable seeing any public display of in
Mohan Rao also said that he spoke with Ben Kingsley who played the role of Gandhi. His advice to the veteran actor was to emulate Gandhi's way of life to get into the essence of the character. He advised him to give up meat, sleep on a hard floor with just a thin mattress and lose muscle mass. Ben K
The iconic film was mesmerizing from the first to the last scene. It won eight Oscars. U.S. Mohan Rao was happy with the way the film turned out and deeply appreciative of Richard Attenborough's eye for detail and aesthetic sensibilities.
S. Mohan Rao presented me my first copy of 'My Experiments with Truth' by Mahatma Gandhi, when I first arrived in Delhi in the fifties. He told me to read it and realize how a boy, who was considered average, grew to become a Mahatma. His life is a lesson for all of us he used to tell me. Do not g