A new doc­u­men­tary explores the Bea­t­les’ endur­ing rela­tion­ship with India

You don’t have to be a Bea­t­les super­fan to know that they had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with India. Yet while John, Paul, George and Ringo took an active inter­est in the country’s cul­ture and clas­si­cal music, notably allow­ing it to seep into their song­writ­ing on ​‘The White Album’ and ​‘Abbey Road’ – the for­mer hav­ing been large­ly writ­ten dur­ing an extend­ed stay in the sub­con­ti­nent – their impact on the Indi­an pub­lic is less well-documented.

Now an enlight­en­ing new doc­u­men­tary, which pre­mieres at the UK Asian Film Fes­ti­val next month, is set to change that. Direc­tors Ajoy Bose and Peter Comp­ton have con­densed hours of rare archival footage, much of it nev­er before seen, along with audio record­ings, pho­tographs and eye-wit­ness accounts, to tell the sto­ry of the band’s time in India as it has nev­er been told before.

The film begins by recount­ing how the Bea­t­les first came to India in Feb­ru­ary 1968, seek­ing cre­ative inspi­ra­tion, spir­i­tu­al guid­ance and, in Harrison’s case, a crash course in sitar play­ing from the vir­tu­oso com­pos­er Pan­dit Ravi Shankar. Clips of the pair del­i­cate­ly pluck­ing their instru­ments togeth­er against a serene open-air back­drop pro­vide a clear insight into the com­mit­ment, crafts­man­ship and open-mind­ed­ness that made Har­ri­son such a supreme talent.

Most famous­ly, it was on this vis­it that the Bea­t­les became acquaint­ed with the Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi. At the Maharishi’s ashram on the out­skirts of Rishikesh in north­ern India, the band stud­ied Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion along­side the likes of Dono­van, Mia Far­row and the Beach Boys’ Mike Love, each hop­ing to fur­ther their artis­tic devel­op­ment and sense of per­son­al ful­fil­ment. But the Bea­t­les’ rev­er­ence for the guru grad­u­al­ly fad­ed, and one by one they returned home to Eng­land where they denounced his dubi­ous practices.

Cru­cial­ly, the doc­u­men­tary is called The Bea­t­les and India – its focus is as much on the lega­cy of Beat­le­ma­nia on Indi­an pop­u­lar cul­ture as it is on the band’s spir­i­tu­al retreat in ear­ly ​’68. Some of the most engag­ing footage fea­tured here shows four young Indi­an men clad in match­ing bowl cuts and mohair suits enter­tain­ing a rapt night­club crowd. (It’s worth not­ing that the Bea­t­les’ music is absent through­out, though this shouldn’t detract from your over­all enjoy­ment; you’ve heard the songs a thou­sand times before anyway.)

So at the same time as the Bea­t­les spent sev­er­al months soak­ing up India’s dis­tinct sounds and dai­ly rhythms, the reverse was also hap­pen­ing. As var­i­ous talk­ing-heads experts and musi­cians tes­ti­fy over the course of the film, the Fab Four changed India as much as it changed them, and more than half a cen­tu­ry on from their high­ly-pub­li­cised trip their influ­ence can still be felt here, there and everywhere.

The Bea­t­les and India will receive its world pre­mière at BFI South­bank on Sun­day 6 June as part of the UK Asian Film Fes­ti­val.