Following superstar Bachchan, actor and MP Hema Malini criticised Slumdog Millionaire: 'I like the film but I don't agree with the way India has been portrayed in the film.

Another angry Indian filed a defamation case against its name that insulted slum dwellers. As the Oscars were announced, a huge poster went up at the entrance of Mumbai's largest slum Dharavi proclaiming in Hindi, 'We are not Slumdogs.' No wonder, low income Indians are not lining up to watch the Hindi version. It is not doing well because these filmgoers say that they do not need to see the film as they are living it out in their daily lives!

Yet the film has plenty going for it. For a start, the pithy screenplay by Simon Beaufoy hurtles at a frantic pace and the direction by Danny Boyle never allows attention to wander away even for a fraction of a moment. The acting by the slum children, and later, by the lead actors — Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan — blends seamlessly into the rags to riches tale. A. R. Rahman provides eclectic music. Most of all, the unique perspective of the director and the camera angles capture the energy and the momentum of India to make it a masterpiece.

So the elite Indians at home and abroad are gushing about the film. In well appointed drawing rooms, they ask, 'Why a Bollywood director, living all his life in Mumbai, could not make such a film? Why do foreign directors like Richard Attenborough and Danny Boyle have to make films on India and win Oscars?' The Indian film fraternity is not pleased. They say, 'What about Raj Kapoor's Boot Polish made in 1954? What about Shehar Aur Sapna (The City and the Dream) is 1963 directed by K. A. Abbas? Based on his life, it depicted the travails of a pavement dweller. Wasn't these similar themes?'

Abroad, the educated, overseas Indians appreciate it for its candid reporting and riveting drama. Everybody knows that India is more than just slums, they say. But there are also plenty of irate overseas Indians sending e-mails to all and sundry, furious at the film's anti-Indian and anti-Hindu distortions. They do make some prickly points that cannot be explained by artistic license.

The film starts with Hindus killing Muslims, denigrates the Indian national anthem, shows God Ram as a brutal warrior, a devotional song for Krishna is taught to maim and blind street children to become beggars, reduces the Taj Mahal to a five star hotel, claims local tourist guides are written by 'bloody Indian beggars' and so on. The title irks many Indians. An Indian in Los Angeles complained that he is being called 'a slum dog' as a new insult. Danny Boyle, the director, explained it in an interview with Newsweek, 'Basically, it's a hybrid of the word 'underdog' — and everything that means in terms of rooting for the underdog and validating his triumph — and the fact that he obviously comes from the slums. That's what we intended.'

The brilliant film raises strong emotions about how India is shown as the land of poverty, slums and deprivation. Does it follow the set pattern of films like Mother India by Catherine Mayo, The City of Joy, Salaam Bombay and Water that show the squalor and misery of India to make a mark in the West?

It's a far cry from Gandhi that won eight Oscars for it showed the father of the nation fighting non-violently for justice and freedom against all odds. But here we have a battered slum child, who hits the jackpot despite the poverty, and also finds his true love as a bonus. And it's set against the brutal reality of India today, the poor-rich chasm and the religious divide.

More than anything else, the Oscar winner focuses on India's abysmal poverty for India has the largest number of people living below the poverty line. An estimated 350 million people live on less than one dollar a day, the yardstick for poor persons as defined by the World Bank. Almost half of India's children, at 46 per cent, are malnourished. A third of Indian children are stunted. Two out of every three children are underweight. These horrendous facts are also equally disturbing for sanitations, education, health and social services for the slum dwellers as the poor lead a dog's life. In fact, some media reports point out that their lives are even worse than what's- shown in this film. Conditioned with the India's image of a begging bowl for half a century, this parade of poverty reassures the West that India has still a long way to go despite Indian businessmen buying some top British and American companies and Indian tecchies and workers outsourcing millions of jobs.

Yet India takes pride in this British film with an American distributor set in India. True, music director A. R. Rahman has won two Oscars — the first for any Indian; and Resul Pookutty won another for Sound Mixing. Now three Oscars for India mean that Indian film makers have arrived on the global scene. After Warner Bros production of the recent flop Chandani Chowk to China, 'Slumdog' certainly heralds a new synergy between Bollywood and Hollywood as its Indian stars and technicians have become famous globally.
But it's a dog eat dog world in showbiz. 'When I have to choose between love and hate, I choose love,' said Rahman. But when it comes to sharing the limelight at the Kodak Theatre in LA, he forgets Sukhwinder Singh, the singer of the winning song, and croons on the mike himself to hog the spotlight.  

When the celebrations for this film ebb away, some pertinent questions remain: will the lives of the slum dwellers improve in India? After China grabbed the film world's attention with Crouching Tiger by winning four Oscars in 2001 to 'arrive' in Hollywood, will it be India turn now? After all, every dog has its day.

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