Rao as Govardhan Y. G. Mahendran as Yagyam Vaiyapuri as Vedha (Tamil) / Arun Mehra as Vedha (Hindi) Arun Bali as Shaheed Suhrawardy Shadaab Khan as Altaf Tailor Yatin Karyekar as Qureshi Manoj Pahwa as Jalal Chandrahasan as Mohangandhi Raman Mohini Mathur as Haajra Begum Tushar Gandhi as himself Sharad Ponkshe as Nathuram Godse Shubhangi Gokhale as Rani Annapurna as Mrs. Chattopadhyay Shruti K. Haasan as Vallabhbhai Patel's daughter Aravind as Sankar Kishthaya Shabbir as Aparna's attacker A. C. Murali as Parthasarathy Nikita Palekar as Pushpa Iyengar Deleted Scenes Nawazuddin Siddiqui Saranya Ponvannan Production Development Kamal Haasan had wasted all of 1998 on filming Marudhanayagam, which ended up in production hell, and did not act in any other film during the period (barring Kaathala Kaathala), much to the dismay of his fans. To please them, he sought to begin and finish another film before resuming work on Marudhanayagam, which became Hey Ram. Another motivation for Haasan to do the film was because, although he was born in a family of people devoted towards Mahatma Gandhi, he himself was not initially a devotee, and had a critical view of Gandhi even as a teenager. Haasan initially intended to title the film as Satya Sodanai (), a reference to the title of Gandhi's autobiography, published in English as The Story of My Experiments with Truth, but later decided on Hey Ram, the last words allegedly spoken by Gandhi when he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse. The film was produced by Haasan and his brother Chandrahasan under their banner Raaj Kamal Films International, and was the company's first film to be shot simultaneously in Tamil and Hindi. The dialogues for the Hindi version were written by Manohar Shyam Joshi. Cinematography was handled by Tirru, and editing by Renu Saluja. Casting Haasan chose the Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to portray the Pathan character Amjad Ali Khan, partly because the actor's father was a Pathan who was from Peshawar. Though not a native Tamil speaker, Khan dubbed in his own voice. He did not ask for any remuneration from Haasan, as he considered it an honour and privilege to work with one of his mentors. The Marathi actor Mohan Gokhale was initially cast as Shriram Abhyankar; he had started working on the film in Madras but died suddenly due to a heart attack. Haasan later chose Atul Kulkarni, another Marathi actor, to do the