The success of Slumdog Millionaire at award nights and box offices overseas has brought much joy to the public at large in India. After all, it?s been a long time since a movie filmed in India, and set entirely around an entirely Indian story has bagged so much attention in the West. The last film to do something similar was Richard Attenborough?s multiple Oscar winning Gandhi, released in 1982. Like Slumdog it was produced and directed by foreigners, but it was a story about India, filmed in India.
This column doesn?t intend to critique the film?-that?s best left to professional film critics. But Slumdog has already provoked reactions beyond the artistic merits or faults of the film. Amitabh Bachchan is hardly the only Indian who will feel strongly about the film depicting the ?dirty underbelly of a third world nation? to Western audiences who will lap it up. After all, India?s image in the world has changed from just a dirt poor nation full of slums and deprivation to a potential economic and (to a lesser extent) political powerhouse.
Back in the early 1980s, though, when Gandhi became one of the most critically acclaimed movies of its time, we were indeed a different India?an India accustomed more to the moribund ?Hindu rate of growth? (3-4 %) than aspirations to match the world?s best in any sphere?whether in building globally competitive business or in making world class films. At that time, our best brand abroad was probably Mahatma Gandhi, and the non-violent independence movement he had led three decades earlier. The West was more captivated by what the freedom movement had achieved than by the things India had achieved after independence?our closed, statist, slow growing economy, and our ill-fated tilt towards the Soviet Union.
However, economic reforms started changing the way India viewed itself and indeed the way the West viewed India. Over the last two decades we have opened up, and registered growth rates of up to 9%. In the process, we have created world class companies?in IT, pharma, automobiles and beyond?that now successfully compete with the global leaders in global markets. We have created more billionaires than China. So why?-the sceptics ask in their first grievance with Slumdog?-isn?t Western-made cinema choosing to depict this face of India? After all, most mainstream Indian films these days?-unlike films made until the early 1990s?-depict this glamorous India. In fact, until the end of the 1980s, the Big B himself had made the role of the frustrated (sans any glamour) angry young man, all his own. But if Indian films have changed their perception about India, why aren?t western made films doing the same, ask the critics?
A second possible grievance: we now make world-class films, not the grainy, almost amateurish movies of the 1970s and 1980s, so why should a western-made film about India gather so much more attention? In fact, the indigenous film industry in India is the only film industry (along with Hong Kong?s) which has held out and beaten down competition from Hollywood?something which the once mighty, and still haughty, continental European film industry failed to do.
The unique formula of made-in-India films (which deems almost every movie to be a colourful musical) has helped corner a big market in India and a growing market of NRIs (and other expats from South Asia) overseas. And let?s face it: it?s big money. The Indian film industry, in this columnist?s view should not worry about western appreciation?it should just focus on remaining competitive.
It is also your columnist?s view that the first ?depiction of underbelly? grievance isn?t particularly important or relevant either. It?s true that Slumdog, or indeed the Booker prize winning novel White Tiger, depict the underbelly of India and may garner attention because of the subject matter. But let?s be honest and admit that we still have a dirty underbelly. After all, we?re still a country where nearly 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.
The more fascinating aspect of the stories of both Slumdog and White Tiger is, however, missed in the general discourse. Interestingly, both stories feature as their central character, someone dirt poor who, through the effort of enterprise (legitimate, illegitimate or plain lucky), becomes rich. Neither story is about the hopelessness of poverty?they are about the aspirations and real possibilities of escaping that poverty. That, in a sense, is the new India?of course we have our world class companies, films and billionaires. But we also have millions of other less known entrepreneurs who are finding opportunities to climb the economic ladder?they are increasingly, and positively, choosing not to accept their poverty like earlier generations may have.
So while the Indian film industry depicts the affluent face of the new India, somebody also needs to depict the not-so-affluent, but equally aspirational and ambitious side of the other India. The West, and indeed India, needs to understand the co-existence of these two worlds, which are two generations away from Gandhi, one generation away from economic stagnation, and a generation here to seize their moment, with generous helpings of enterprise and hard work and some amount of bending the rules. Like it or not, that?s the real India.
dhiraj.nayyar@expressindia.com
