Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:42:55 -0800 (PST) From: edward desilva <[email protected]>
First of all has any one tried to find out which type of people or 'community', 'make' slums? I do not have a cut a paste job to enter here but in another reality program they showed, resident committee of flat owners do not allow a certain religious people. All religion people are allowed except one (you can guess). If I'm bold enough to ask - which community, specially in Mumbai do you think are slum dwellers? Slumdog director did not have any difficulty in choosing his child actors from there - did he now!? Mario observes: I have no idea why Edward is so afraid to admit that he is referring to Muslims, when he refers to "which type of people or 'community', 'make' slums", and "All religion people are allowed except one (you can guess)." I also have no idea what the point is of this particular post. While a couple of the Muslims in Slumdog Millionaire were slum kids like Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, so were the double-Oscar winner A.R. Rahman and the lyricist Gulzar. There are 65 million slum dwellers in India. I don't know if anyone has a breakdown of slum dwellers by religion but I feel pretty sure that there are more non-Muslims than Muslims among the 65 million slum dwellers. Some of the most successful Indians are Muslims, including professionals and businessmen and women, sportsmen and women and movie stars. Affluent Mumbai suburbs like Bandra are an example where Muslims have replaced many Christians and bought their homes and property and apply in large numbers for admission to Catholic schools. A few years ago St. Andrew's High School had to take special steps to ensure that Christians would gain admittance because so many Muslims were applying. We recently saw some Goanetters complain that the government favors Muslims. The fact is that there are many government, as well as Muslim-community programs designed to help Muslims in India, and many Muslims have taken advantage of these to enhance their education and professional training and get better jobs. More Muslims need to step up and access these programs, and shed their traditional cultural backwardness based on a domination of women that approaches wholesale misogyny
