When Charlie Chaplin Met Gandhi: How He Became the Inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's Movie Modern Times

Key Points:

Thousands gathered outside a ‘humble little house’ in London’s East End on 22 September 1931. Residents of the slum district thronged outside the building, while photographers and press swarmed the inside. On the second floor two of the largest personalities in the world at the time, Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin, were meeting.

Mahatma Gandhi was amongst the most influential figures of the 20th century – his ideologies of satyagraha, morality, and religion gaining global admiration. He has inspired the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, maintained correspondence with Tolstoy and Einstein, and, of course, continues to drive movements of resistance within India. Lesser known amidst this history of events and influences is a brief meeting he held with acting legend Charlie Chaplin.

In 1931, Gandhi had come to London to attend the Second Round Table Conference to discuss Constitutional reforms and self-governance in India. This was his only exit from India since he returned from South Africa in 1915, and before his death in 1948. He rejected the British government’s offer to house him in an expensive West End hotel, instead choosing to stay with a friend in London’s East End. Residents of the working-class locality welcomed him with open arms.

Earlier that year, Chaplin had released one of his hit films, City Lights, and was in town for its premiere. At the time, Gandhi was at the height of his international fame – just the previous year he had been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, while being imprisoned for violating British Salt Law. In 1931 he was released unconditionally due to popular pressure. Advertisements plastered London, inviting people to come and meet Gandhi. He received countless letters and offers asking for an audience. Amongst these was one by Chaplin.

When he first received Chaplin’s letter, Gandhi did not know who he was. Having dedicated his life to India’s freedom struggle, he scarcely had time for entertainment – he had only seen two movies at the time, one in English and one in Hindi. He rejected the offer at first but some of the workers Gandhi had associated himself with convinced him otherwise.

Chaplin had grown up poor, spending his childhood navigating workhouses, a broken family, and small-time stage performances. Chaplin did not forget his roots after his success. He was a radical actor, using his films to advocate for workers’ rights and against fascism. Hearing this changed Gandhi’s mind.

A meeting was organized. A friend of Gandhi, Chuni Lal Katial, offered up his apartment in Canning Town for the event. The rendezvous received widespread publicity. A video of the event captured Chaplin pushing his way through a massive crowd just to make it to the door. In his autobiography, Chaplin recalled, “I met him in a humble little house in the slum district off the East India Dock Road. Crowds filled the streets and the press and the photographers packed both floors. The interview took place in an upstairs front room about twelve feet square.” As the two men waved at the masses from an upstairs window, they returned the greeting with chants of “Good old Charlie! Good old Gandhi!”

Chaplin recalls the moments before Gandhi arrived: “As I waited I began to think of what I would say to him. I had heard of his imprisonment and hunger strikes, and his fight for the freedom of India, and vaguely knew of his opposition to the use of machinery.” There was only one witness to the conversation itself – Mahadev Desai, journalist and Gandhi’s personal secretary. He described Chaplin as “a genial, unassuming gentleman and nothing like we find him on the film.”

After Gandhi’s arrival, Chaplin began with a question: “I am all for the freedom of your country and its people. But there is one thing I don’t understand. Why do you oppose the use of machines?” Chaplin took the viewpoint of the worker – to him machinery meant less labour and more leisure.

Gandhi replied patiently, “I am not against machines, but I cannot bear to witness these very machines take away a man’s work from him. Machinery prior to now has made us dependent on England, and the one method we are able to rid ourselves of that dependency is to boycott all items made by equipment.”

“In cloth and food every nation should be self-contained. We were self-contained and want to be that again. England with her large-scale production has to look for a market elsewhere. We call it exploitation,” Gandhi elaborated.

“So the question is confined only to India?” Chaplin asked, “But supposing you had in India the independence of Russia, and you could find other work for your unemployed and ensure equable distribution of wealth, would you not then despise machinery? You would subscribe to shorter hours of work and more leisure for the worker?”

“Certainly,” Gandhi replied with a smile.

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Writing on the conversation in Young India, Gandhi’s weekly publication, Desai recalled, “The question has now been discussed with Gandhiji for the hundredth time, but I have not come across a lay foreigner who grasped the situation so quickly. The reason was perhaps his freedom from prejudice or prepossession and certainly his sympathy.”

As the conversation moved ahead, Chaplin only proved Desai’s observation further. The conversation shifted to prison and Chaplin recalled his visit to one: “I can face a crowd of rich people, but I cannot face these prisoners… What difference is there between us and them except that of the bars around them? I am for a radical prison reform. Crime is a disease like any other and it should be treated not in prisons but in houses of correction.”

After this, Gandhi knelt down to pray, and Chaplin joined him in earnest.

The meeting itself lasted only an hour but had a grave impact. “I obtained a lucid object lesson in tactical manoeuvring in India's struggle for freedom, impressed, paradoxically, by a practical, virile-minded visionary with a will of iron to hold it out,” Chaplin recalled in his autobiography. Gandhi’s insights on modernity and non-violence stuck with Chaplin and would go on to influence two of his most popular films.

A few years after the meeting, in 1936, Chaplin released his film Modern Times – about the perils of industrialisation and the toll of the factory on the worker. Though inspired by separate events, the influence of Gandhi’s insights on the overall message of the film is clear.

Then, in 1940, struck by the nationalist frenzy taking over Europe, Chaplin released perhaps his most iconic film – The Great Dictator. Through humour and humanism, Chaplin provides a sharp commentary on fascism, highlighting the impersonality of the modern world, while advocating for collective resistance to such evils. The final monologue of the film, Chaplin’s first to feature dialogue, has been praised as one of the best in cinematic history. In it, Chaplin says:

He talks about the alienation of the modern world: 

At one point, Chaplin reminds the people of their power: 

It is hard not to see Gandhi’s insight in Chaplin’s words. [Rh/DS]

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