Bertrand Russell was the greatest
English-speaking philosophers of the 20th century and
also one of its greatest mathematicians. Few people know it but he
also had time to appear in what were then known in the west as
“Bombay Dreadfuls” and what we now call Bollywood movies. It was 1967, Russell
was already 95 and the big issues of the day were the Vietnam war and nuclear
disarmament, the former which Russell opposed and the latter which he
supported. So when he was approached to appear in a film about a young Indian
studying medicine in London who planned to go to
Japan to help the victims of
Hiroshima, the
always kindly and open Russell agreed. The
film is called Aman and the doctor, played by Rajendra Kumar, gets an
audience with the great man who gives him his blessings and encouragement. It’s
not clear whether the director coned Russell or that he Russell
understood that the film was going to be a popular one – perhaps he thought it
was going to be a documentary. Anyway, the result really is one for Ripley’s
Believe It Or Not.