The lunchtime hum of a Delhi garden cafe was split by a piercing cry. "You! You're one of those! Those Shining India types!" The accuser was Seema Guha, a writer. The object of her ire was a gray-bearded cultural commentator who disapproved of "Slumdog Millionaire."
Thus erupted another version of an argument being had, in a multitude of languages, across India.
Some see the improbable tale of a boy from a Mumbai slum who makes it to game-show stardom as a hackneyed postcard of the worst of India, a film obsessed with the filth of the shantytowns, religious riots and brutal police. They say it shows none of the new India -- "India Shining," in the words of a slogan used in the last election -- and it relies on outdated cliches.
Others say that's a parochial defensiveness for a fine bit of cinema, and who cares that it was made by Britain's Danny Boyle?
Ten Oscar nominations and plenty of international hype have served to guarantee the film lots of talk. Debate, however, has not been matched by box-office success: In its opening week in mainstream theatres last week, the film tanked, outsold by almost every bit of Bollywood dance and romance.
"Slumdog Millionaire" is fodder for the chattering classes and the fundamentalist hardliners -- oddly allied in their preoccupations -- but of little interest to the vast majority of Indians who are busy getting on with the gritty business of living.
It is front-page news every time the film is nominated for one of its growing heap of awards, which are noted with national pride -- Boyle had an Indian co-director and most of the rest of the production team and crew are Indian, although the production companies are foreign. That pride should be on the rise, since the film's Oscar hopes were bolstered on the weekend when Boyle got the nod for best director from the Directors Guild of America. The guild honor has been matched by an Oscar for best director in all but six of the award's 61 years.
At the same time, plenty of people have found reason to protest. A community group filed public-interest legislation in Gujarat to try to stop the film from being shown because, the lawsuit alleges, it portrays slum-dwellers badly. Hindu fundamentalist political parties have organized pickets outside multiplexes showing the film, which they say depicts the Hindu god Ram in a negative light. Most such protests have been peaceful, although one, in Goa last week saw members of the powerful nationalist Hindu group Shiv Sena trash a theatre. In Chandigarh, slum residents led by the Vishva Hindu Parishad, a Hindu group, protested the film based on its title.
"The name of the film depicts the sick mentality of Britishers," scowled spokesman Vijay Singh Bhardwaj. "Even so many years after independence, the mindsets of English people have not changed towards Indians."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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