Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Pass Book Issue

In Richard Attenborough's 1982 adaptation of the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Ben Kingsley the Gandhi character gives his first speech at a working site filled with Indians and their wives guarded by the the British Police.
Gandhi first of all uses ethos by making sure his wife is a part of the movement to increase his credibility to the crowd. He also uses personal pronouns, we, our, ourselves to cement his relationship and establish himself as a part of the audience.
He uses logos conclusively to draw that that the symbol of status of all indians in South Africa at that time was embodied in the passbook they were required to carry at all  times but this was not so the for the Europeans. And that since they (Indians and Europeans) were all part of the British Empire they(the Indians) should boycott the passbook requirement.
He also use pathos with his actions. When he started burning the passbook and he was whipped severely by the police, in an effort to make him stop, he persevered through the beatings to complete the task of burning the passbook. This stirred the crowd emotionally as they finally saw Gandhi as a man who was willing to do whatever was necessary to get the job done.
This speech is more of an epideictic one because he addresses one the current grievances of the Indian populace in South Africa. He also places blame on the British authorities for being the cause of their suffering today. The speech also has an element of both forensic and deliberative rhetoric. He uses deliberative rhetoric to incite the crowd to join him in protesting against the passbook law and uses forensic rhetoric by mentioning
 
segregation and how the Indians have badly been treated in the past and how that should be corrected.

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