Is Slumdog Millionaire Really Worth Seeing?

What is so great about Slumdog Millionaire?

Does it embrace the stereotypical lens of poverty, filth, injustice, and misery that Westerners like to see India through?

Is it a typical crowd-pleaser Masala Hindi movie, with ubiquitous song and dance sequences, car chases, bad and corrupt police, parents killed when children were small, boys become gangsters, girl ends up in prostitution, good winning over evil in the end formula guaranteed to make zillions at the box office?

Or is it a serious attempt to shock people to the truth that these poverty, filth, injustice, and misery are not going away even as India grows to take its rightful place among the nations of the world?

Are the makers of this film doing India a service by showing something Indian filmmakers could never show? 

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Background of Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire, the 2008 British drama film directed by Danny Boyle has won lots of prestigious awards like the Critics’ Choice Awards, four Golden Globe and seven Bafta Awards as well as being nominated for ten Oscars. But, the film has had a very poor reception in India.

Many Indian critics have not been enthusiastic about the film and it’s portrayal of poverty and life in Mumbai. The film is based on Q and A (2005) written by Vikas Swarup, who is currently India’s Deputy High Commissioner to South Africa. The director is Danny Boyle, of Trainspotting fame and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy are British. The co-director Loveleen Tandon is an Indian from Delhi. The superb actors are also from a mixed background. 

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British Gujarati Dev Patel, who played Muslim Anwar Kharral in the Teen soap Skins, shines again as Muslim Jamal Malik. Irrfan Khan from a Nawab family in Jaipur is the police officer interrogating Jamal Malik. The beautiful Freida Pinto, a Mangalorean Catholic plays Latika. Anil Kapoor from Mumbai plays Prem Kumar, the host of the Indian version of the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The music of Allah Rakkha Rahman, the Hindu born Sufi from Chennai does justice to his fame (100 million records sold) and to the film.



The Plot of Slumdog Millionaire


A police inspector (Irrfan Khan) interrogates Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former street child from the Dharavi slums of Mumbai, India by using clumsy third-degree methods. Jamal is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire hosted by Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor). Jamal has made it to the final question, scheduled for the next day, but the show master bribes the police into accusing Jamal of cheating. He is a lowly chaiwallah or tea-boy, without any education, and cannot know all the answers. 

They also think that he could not have gone up to the last question out of sheer luck. Jamal’s tempestuous life unfolds, and these events give him clues to the questions. In the end, the main baddies get killed, Jamal wins 20 million Rupees (a humungous sum of money anywhere), Jamal finds his childhood lover Latika and they are reunited.

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Significance of Slumdog Millionaire

• Slumdog Millionaire is not a pleasant feelgood orgy of visual delights. 
• Neither is it an epic like Devdas (any version). 
• There is no subtle poetry of underlying emotions as in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955). 
• It also doesn’t look like becoming a Sholay (1975) in India. 

The director Boyle says that the 1975 blockbuster Deewar starring India’s iconic filmstar Amitabh Bachan was an inspiration for this film. Slumdog Millionaire is a very different and disturbing film, especially for Indians. Slumdog Millionaire is targeted at the channelchanger loving MTV generation. The overuse of incessant flashbacks is annoying and confuses. The portrayal of evil, misery, squalor and poverty is more gruesome than in contemporary or old Indian films like Deewar (1975). The rot in society is exposed in all ugliness. The India police are shown as inefficient and corrupt, but the local thana or police station is no Guantanamo either.

Like many movies, the screen version changes everything from character relationships to many of the major dramatic incidents. 

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But, what it succeeds brilliantly is in archetypal representation. 

• The lovers Jamal and Latika believe in kismat or destiny, and they are eventually reunited. 
• The elder brother Salim chooses the dark side like Darth Vader and achieves worldly success. He eventually recognizes his mistakes and atones by eliminating the major obstacle from the path of the lovers and sacrifices his own life in the process. 
• Jamal (a Muslim boy) is portrayed as the virtuous Rama from Hindu mythology. Jamal is not the goody goody simpleton Chance the Gardener (Being There 1979). He practises the ways of the world and takes unwitting people for a ride to make a living, but he is naturally yet effortlessly ethical and embodies some higher ideal, dharma. 

Indian Reactions to Slumdog Millionaire

“If SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. It’s just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not.” Says Amitabh Bachan on his blog.

The Hindustan Times in India dished out five stars out of five, eulogising it as a "masterwork of technical bravura, adorned with inspired ensemble performances and directed with astonishing empathy." 

The Times of India also gave 4.5 stars, brushing aside questions about whether it was a realistic portrayal of slum life. It calls SM, "just a piece of riveting cinema." "Forget the Us versus Them debate. Just go for the pure cinema experience," the newspaper writes.
"'Slumdog' is big but it is essentially a Hollywood film," the general manager for marketing and sales, PVR Cinemas, in Mumbai's Juhu district, Joydeep Ghoshroy, was quoted as saying in the Hindustan Times.
“Had this film been made by an Indian director, it would’ve been trashed as a rotting old hat, which literally stands out only because of its stench, but since the man making it happens to be from the West, we’re all left celebrating the emperor’s new clothes.” Says Arindam Chaudhuri, Editor-in-chief, The Sunday Indian.

An outsider view often gives new insights. The secret of India’s astonishing diversity is that in its long history India has always assimilated outsider views. OutDia becomes India. Ironically, the very language many Indians use to lambast Slumdog Millionaire is English, originally an outsider language.

Why is the Mumbai Terrorist Event Different?

The heinous terrorist events in Mumbai on 26.11.2008 have shocked not only India, but people around the world. It has been called India’s 9/11, signifying that the period of innocence is over.

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Labelling the pre-Mumbai atrocities times as times of innocence displays a stupendous ignorance of facts and realities. 

• According to the South Asian Terrorism Portal 2765 people died due to terrorism in 2006 in India and 3236 in 2005 (which is more than the 2974 killed in 9/11). 
• All this happened in 14 of the 27 states of India. 
• Some of these terrorists openly claimed and were caught at having foreign backing and support, while others were home grown ones. 

Now, this does not also justify saying that “Oh, the people in Mumbai are used to terrorism!” Whether in India, Pakistan, USA, UK or Spain, no one is ever used to terrorism, it is always a traumatic event for people involved.

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Indian Authorities Unprepared for Terrorist Attack

What is significant about the Mumbai incident was that similar to 9/11, the Indian authorities were caught with their trousers down again. The audacity of only 10 people to take on such high profile targets and wreak so much havoc for such a long period, however, reveals something even more pernicious. Terrorism has now adopted a Wikipedia approach to massive destruction, where planners can rely on users (media, terrorism analysis industry and media users) filling in the gaps and contributing to their aims of spreading terror.

Photo Credit: Mary R. Vogt

The masterminds behind the Mumbai attacks have recognised the existence of a Terrorism-hungry media, a terrorism analysis industry, local politicians and power groups eager to capitalise on the event and most significantly that guarantee of instant fame that media accords to the perpetrators. 

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A few days ago the news of the British terror suspect Rashid Rauf being killed in a US drone attack in North Waziristan was spread in global media along with his picture.

Celebrity Terrorism?

By wilfully showing their faces on CCTV cameras, the terrorists betrayed their intentions that their images would be broadcast all over the world, as they were. As far as we know, they did not claim to have any particularly engaging issue for which they took hostages and killed people except that they were programmed to kill and cause maximum destruction.

• Does this incident reveal a new culture of instant attention, which these young men would never dream of getting in their lives devoid of any hope beyond the horizon? 
• Does this mean that alienated young men with no opportunities for structuring their lives with meaning will become prey to the brainwashing of devious evildoers just because we all live in an age of egoistic self-gratification? 
• Is it because the young men have an emptiness within, which the evildoers spot quickly and fill eagerly with their warped programming? 
• Is it the same psychology driving people to take part in programmes like Idols and Big Brother? Has it now become celebrity terrorism?

A Different Solution to Terrorism

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So far, in many countries the response to terrorism has been to fortify borders. Stretching this vision to its limits – can we have a fortress USA, a fortress UK, China or India in this contemporary world of globalization, transparency, and interdependence? Hardly tenable but this vision helps utterly incompetent leaders get to power and keep their power, more so in Western democracies.

A survey, funded by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, conducted over the Internet by TNS-NFO 2005 among 4,260 U.S. residents over the age of sixteen found that 98 percent of U.S. residents believed there will be another terrorist attack during their lifetime. In the USA, $55 billion was spent in 2006 to fight terrorism, 0,8% of it on Intelligence and warning.

• What about seriously directing efforts and a part of these billions at creating social, educational, and entrepreneurial structures that would give meaning to the lives of young men in areas where life is bleak?

By working in closer cooperation with local sensible non-political leaders, if all the countries afflicted by terrorism would spend money and effort in making road, building houses, schools, hospitals, and energy production facilities for the local people to start earning their livelihood decently, would that drive most of the young angry men away from the clutches of the evil machinators?

Will the examples of success stories and viable opportunities, bring hope to them; the hope of living good, meaningful lives by not having that gaping emptiness within for the machinators of evil and hatred to fill in? Further, it would be a great boost to the struggling economies of the developed world, as this would give jobs to their workers too.

Why not give this method a try?

Are Finns Ethnocentric?

Recently on a visit to India, some people who regularly deal with Finns asked me to explain why Finns are ethnocentric. 

"You live in Finland and should be able to give us some insight" 

This question was put to me. This is tough! Now, having lived in Finland more than 25 years, I have no desire to badmouth Finland and still need to find an intelligent insight.

Historically small nations tend to be ethnocentric. But is ethnocentrism still valid in a modern context? The term ethnocentrism is often based on the premise of racial superiority over other races/ethnicities.

Are Finns Ethnocentric and Isolated?

In the old days, Finns mostly kept to themselves as you can expect from a people living on the edge of Europe in a mostly harsh climate. But today, Finland has become a rapidly evolving society embracing many diverse cultures and on the way to becoming global.

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The facts are a bit problematic in describing ethnic diversity. In 2010: 

• 2.7% of Finland's residents were foreign citizens (EU average 6.4%). 
• In Iceland, 7.6% of the population were born abroad. 
• The majority of foreign-born people come to Finland from neighbouring Estonia (18.6%), Russia (16.2%) and Sweden (4.6%). The Estonians are working in Finland and going back home while Russians settle in and get citizenship five times more often.

'Finnish ethnocentrism' is actually a misnomer and ethnocentrism is highly misleading in the context of Finns in these days. The choice of deciding to remain strictly on their own as a socio-economic-political policy has become a minority opinion in Finland. 

The majority of Finns have actually the opposite sentiment as they feel that they are tucked away in a tiny sparsely populated country far away from the centre stage of the world. There is a fervent desire to catch up and not be seen as a peripherial culture. Many a Finn would quip 

“We don’t have much culture, we just came out of the woods recently”.

Now this is not meant to be taken literally, but should be understood as self-irony, which characterises Finnish humour. 

A Finn and a Norwegian would joke that in spite of very different languages and cultures, they have at least one thing in common; a challenging neighbour to the east. 

You can actually discover people of Finnish origin almost anywhere on the globe. Whether they learn Hindi and Marathi and blend in downtown Mumbai or live in Patagonia, Argentina as sheep farmers, you can recognize them, if not from anything else, from their names at least. Typically Finns are also rather self-effacing and try to be modest yet friendly, but there are some exceptions. 

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One does run into an arrogant and high-nosed Finn occasionally, of both gender and among all age groups. 

In Finland, there is even a right-wing political party called Perussuomalaiset. This party is anti-immigration, anti-EU though they are not as extreme as the neo-Nazis. This party is probably going to get stronger over the years and become a decisive factor in politics one day.

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Finns are unique people because of their geography, history and challenging climate and especially how all these have shaped their character.

Challenges Foreigners Experience with Finns

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People having interactions with Finns report that the following are the challenges plaguing foreigners’ attempts to have smooth dealings or settle down to a “lived happily ever after” life in Finland.

• Scant communication, where silence is no embarrassment but a virtue
• Finns prefer to communicate by e-mail or sms messaging. People divorce and are even fired in Finland by sms messages
• Difficulty in making friends with Finns – it might take years as Finns are slow to warm up to new people and show emotions
• Seemingly linear way of thinking. Almost always you have agendas at meetings, start at the beginning with no chit chat at all and finish at the end
• Management by ‘Perkele’ – a very distinct and dogged no-nonsense result oriented management style which ruffles feathers easily
• Challenging climate for most of the year – excepting the short summer, either too wet or too cold and damp or getting a lot of what the British railways called “the wrong kind of snow” in 1991, to explain the occasional slight delays
• There is almost no communal ritual moaning at the workplace so vital and essentially British and also found in most other cultures. The ritual of going out with colleagues and engaging in boss-bashing tongue wagging with a beer is hardly practised in Finland. Finns make up for this at the once yearly Pikkujoulut or Christmas party where scandals to last the whole year might take place.
• Things tend to run quiet and smooth so restless foreigners either get bored or depressed feeling “Nothing ever happens here”. 

So, the answer is 'it depends!' - the Finns are ethnocentric in some contexts while being very global and eager to mix in other contexts.