However many Oscars India might collect, we should never lend legitimacy and romance to scars which should make us hang our heads in shame
At the risk of sounding like a party-pooper, may I inject a note of realism into the wild celebrations accompanying
Slumdog Millionaire's victory at the Oscars? I yield to no one in my admiration for the film, its cast, its audacity, its screenplay, its sympathetic portrayal of the lovely kids of Dharavi. In the early '70s, the late Louis Malle made a documentary for the BBC called
Phantom India. The documentary won numerous awards but was banned by the government because it told the truth, i.e. showed how desperately poor and wretched and unequal the country was. Before that and since, the middle class has been extraordinarily sensitive to Indian poverty being showcased to "foreigners" for awards. Recall Satyajit Ray's
Pather Panchali, down to Aravind Adiga's
The White Tiger.
So, what's changed with Slumdog Millionaire? As far as exploitation of poverty goes, Danny Boyle is up there with Katherine Mayo's Mother India, which Gandhiji dismissed as a "drain inspector's report". Why is the English-speaking elite going gaga, heaping extravagant praise? Beginning with the President to the PM to the leader of the Opposition to the Shiv Sena boss, it seems everyone wants a piece of the Slumdog pie. Could this unexpected triumph on Sonia Gandhi's watch boost the Congress election prospects?
These are weighty questions best set aside. What disturbs me about the Oscar achievement is the collateral fragrance it spreads around our mushrooming slums. We are told Dharavi is a slum of vibrancy, enterprise, the triumph of the human spirit and a model of inter-communal living. Another collateral boon: superpower India has at last come to terms with its penury. It is comfortable with its poverty. If you will pardon my French, that's bullshit!
Slums, whatever artistic gloss you put on them, are ugly, dark, squalid, crime-infested locations—a sign of a failed state rather than a shining one. However many Oscars India might collect, we should never lend legitimacy and romance to scars which should make us hang our heads in shame. There is nothing nice about a slum, even a five-star one like Dharavi, and the Indian state must avoid flirting with the myth that a slum is a beautiful place, inhabited by beautiful people doing beautiful things—an example to the rest of the country of how hard work and honest toil can make the rags-to-riches story possible.
In fact, Slumdog Millionaire should remind us of what we try to obscure and sanitise with pretty words. Already, our rulers with votebanks in mind, have, to an extent succeeded in making us accept the existence of slums as an inevitable consequence of urbanisation and globalisation. Slumdog Millionaire could further tranquilise our sensibilities to the distress and despair right under our nose.
I too celebrate the success of Slumdog Millionaire. Pity about the slums.