The Making of Mahatma

I thought the film, as a film, was a bit of a stinker. I found the content interesting, insofar as it dealt in great detail with Gandhi's early life in Africa. The insight I gained into Gandhi, the person, during the interval break, however, was much more interesting. I was talking to a class-mate who is of African descent, who was far from complimentary about the Indian presence in Africa. According to him, Indians migrated to Africa for the sole purpose of making money, from white colonists and black Africans alike, and showed little or no compassion for the native people, who were far more oppressed and miss-treated than Indians. The film depicts unfair treatment of the Indian community by the government through discriminatory laws pertaining to commerce. Protest against these laws was met with rough justice. Contrast this with the treatment of native Africans, hardly depicted in the film at all, who were treated like animals, without access even to rough justice.
I think this can be understood through caste. Gandhi was Vaisya (merchant) caste and when he first went to India he went to practice company law, as an advocate for the Vaisya community in South Africa. He became a champion and a leader of this community, which is not within Vaisya dharma. I speculate that it may have been seen as "OK" by him and the community, because of the special circumstance of it being a Vaisya-only community, outside of mother India. I further speculate that on his return to India, broader society there would not, and did not, accept Gandhi as a leader.