India reacts with mixed feelings to the remarkable acclaim in the west for Slumdog Millionaire.
Bemusement by some. Sour grapes from some in Bollywood. Pride by others. Resentment from some wealthy Indians, like Amitabh Bachchan, who delude themselves with India's achievements, create an alternative reality, while ignoring its backwardness and filth and abject poverty that cancels out much of the achievement. The last time I checked, some 65 million Indians live in slums, with no toilets, no running water, bootlegged electricity where possible, on the very edge of survival. Most middle-class Indians have no clue what the slums are like. They exist side by side with wealthy neighborhoods, especially in large cities like Mumbai. Indians know the slums are there by the stench as they pass by, but they ignore the slums as much as they possibly can. The slum-dwellers live on a different planet, a different reality. Now some Indians are upset that the rest of the world has seen India's dark underbelly, places most Indians look at without seeing, pretending like they don't exist; resentful when they become unavoidable. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3a2c1ea6-0167-11de-8199-000077b07658.html Excerpts: India reacted with mixed feelings as Slumdog Millionaire, an enthralling rags-to-riches tale set in the slums of Mumbai, scooped up eight Academy Awards in Los Angeles, including Best Picture. The backdrop to a redemptive love story is that of a poor, brutal and blighted society. That world, though real to hundreds of millions of Indians, is sharply at odds with how modern India sees itself. Many Indian viewers are highly uncomfortable with the depiction of the slumland, the deliberate maiming of children and police torture. Priyadarshan Nair, an India film-maker, complained strongly that the film makes a mockery of India. “It’s nothing but a mediocre Bollywood film, which has used references from several Hindi films very smartly,” he wrote in the newspaper India Today at the weekend. “India is not Somalia. We are one of the foremost nuclear powers in the world, our satellites are roaming the universe. Our police commissioners’ offices don’t look like shacks and there are no blind children begging in the streets of Mumbai.” Much of the resentment stems from the fact that India’s own booming Bollywood film industry – and the big names of Indian cinema – have not previously been recognised at the Academy Awards. Slumdog Millionaire and its cast, including child actors drawn from the slums, have succeeded where the glitz and the greats have not. [end of excerpts]
