Teachers' Day 2016 : FTII chief Gajendra Chauhan on the man who taught him moral values

If you grew up watching TV in the early 1990s, chances are that you were familiar with Gajendra Chauhan's face way before his name hit the headlines in June 2015.

After all, he played the righteous Yudhishthira in the popular mythological television series Mahabharata, based on the Indian classical epic, which ran from 1988 to 1990.

But public memory of him was revived last year when he was appointed by the ruling BJP government as chairperson of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), the country's premier film school, located in Pune.

His appointment was met with massive protests and widespread criticism, and his credentials to head the country's premier filmmaking institute were questioned.

Students of FTII went on a 139-day strike demanding his removal from the post, and many others called it a part of the BJP government's attempts at "saffronisation" of educational institutes by installing loyalists to top posts. Chauhan had joined the BJP in 2004.

It was reported that way more respected names, such as those of filmmakers Shyam Benegal and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, as well as filmmaker/lyricist Gulzar, had been bypassed to pick Chauhan.

Chauhan assured everyone that he had spent 35 years in the film industry and asked for a chance to prove himself. But while Chauhan's credentials as a film educationist are yet to be proved, who were the educationists who influenced him?

On the occasion of Teachers' Day, Catch spoke to Chauhan about which teacher had influenced him the most in life.