Slumdog Millionaire - A hit or miss among Indians?

“Slumdog Millionaire” is a hit across the world, but in India, protesters have taken to the streets to attack the film.

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Some Indians find the word “slumdog” in the movie’s title to be insulting to slum-dwellers. More generally, the rags-to-riches romance has been called “poverty porn” for the way it casts a glowing light on a very poor section of Mumbai society and promotes “slum tourism.”

There has been quite a hullabaloo in India (and among Indians living outside the country) over the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”: people accusing it of being poverty porn, or balking at the fact that Danny Boyle, who is British, has created a film about slum life that ignores India’s recent economic prosperity. One of the more outraged complaints has been that the title of the movie is derogatory to people living in the slums. A lawsuit has also been filed demanding that the title be changed.

Back in the good old days when Satyajit Ray often made the most sublime neo-realistic cinema, one Ms. Nargis Dutt caustically charged him with selling Indian poverty abroad. Yet, Satyajit Ray"s

films did not feature Calcutta"s slums but the villages of Bengal. There was an undercurrent of poverty in his major films like Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Pratidwandhi but there was human irony. No romanticizing poverty yet ultimately a resounding affirmation of human dignity.

Through the vicissitudes of times, India has emerged as a global economy shedding both its Nehruvian rate of growth and the associated stereotypes, although we are admittedly a third world country with sub Saharan level hunger and human development indices. Yet, a share of its misfortune may be attributed to being surrounded by two failed states whose burdens of jihadi terrorism and poverty India has to suffer. Even the slum is an artificial socio-political construct and misrepresents Indian poverty.

Indian slums have unpaid electricity accounts yet even today thousands of Indian villages wait electrification; slums have NGOs operating in vain while villages still await their first permanent school buildings. Slums create and sustain criminals yet millions of Indian villages represent a morally and ethical superior way of life and hospitality. Slums in India are infested by some over 30-40 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants who constitute a sizable secular votebank.

But no matter who says what we have to admit the fact that the movie made us proud. It was indeed a proud moment for India as the entire nation woke up to the good news of the triple haul of Oscars.

A R Rahman created history by becoming the first Indian to win two Oscars for the Best Original Score Slumdog Millionaire and Best Original Song Jai ho and sound engineer Resul Pookutty won the third trophy of the day by winning the award for sound mixing for Slumdog Millionaire. “Before coming here, I was excited and terrified. The last time I felt that way was when I was getting married,” said A R Rahman in his acceptance speech after bagging the Original Score award. Rahman was back on the dais again to accept the Oscar for the best Original Song for the number Jai ho rendered by Sukhwinder Singh and Mahalakshmi Iyer.

The Mumbai-based rags-to-riches romance, Slumdog Millionaire stole the show at the Oscar Award ceremony by winning as many as eight awards out of 10 nominations including Best Film, Best Director award for Danny Boyle, Best Original Song and Original Score for A R Rahman, Best Sound Mixing for Resul Pookutty, Ian Tapp and Richard Pryke and Best Adapted Screenplay for Simon Beaufoy.

Earlier, the sole Oscar glory for India was won by costume designer Bhanu Athaiya a good 26 years ago in 1983 for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.

It had also won the Golden Globe Awards for best drama, best director (Danny Boyle), best screenplay (Simon Beaufoy) and best original score (A.R. Rahman).

India's music maestro Allah Rakha Rahman had also scooped the BAFTA award in the best music score category for Slumdog Millionaire ; it also won six other awards, including the Best Film at the star-studded function in London.

So, no matter what we say, we have to admit that the movie Slumdog Millionaire has made us proud and we Indians have mixed reactions regarding it.