Gutter inspectors

‘Slumdog
Millionaire’, a film made by British director Danny Boyle based on the
novel ‘Q & A’ authored by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, won four
top awards this year at the Golden Globe Awards ceremony in Beverly
Hills, California. The film has won Best Dramatic Picture, Best
Screenplay, Best Director and Best Original Music Score awards and
India has gone berserk over A R Rahman’s win. Rahman has become the
first Indian to bag the ‘prestigious’ Golden Globe Award! Though Vikas
Swarup is an ‘Indian’ diplomat, he seemed to have no hesitation in
‘selling’ India for his self-interests.

 

No
doubt Rahman’s musical track record has been phenomenal and he has been
tasting only successes right from his first film ‘Roja’ in 1992 and he
has never looked back since then. India has a great tradition of music
and it has produced great musicians of all sorts since time immemorial.
Indian history has enough evidences to highlight its grand musical
tradition, which has evolved with its magnificent cultural heritage.
Even in the present contemporary music, India has stalwarts in the
industry and Rahman is one among them. It is rather unfortunate that
the Golden Globe authorities have taken so many years to recognise an
Indian Composer. While whole heartedly appreciating Rehman for his
achievement, it is imperative to view the issue in a different
perspective and analyse the ‘western attitude’ in awarding people, who
denigrate India.

 

The
fact of the matter is that, the award has been given to Rehman for
scoring the music for a film, which has shown the ‘ugly’ side of India
in an ‘exaggerated’ manner. Had Rehman scored music for a movie, which
has shown India’s brighter side, he might not have got the award at
all! The film has denigrated India right through from the ‘title’,
picturising as if India is poverty-stricken and violence-prone. The
word ‘slumdog’ itself seems to be intended to insult the children
living in Indian slums and the film is supposed to have projected them
in an insulting manner.  

 

The
history of awards and accolades given to India by the western world,
particularly in the literary and entertainment arena, shows that the
projects, which have attempted to denigrate India’s time-tested
civilization and culture and tried to project the poverty and
illiteracy, have won the awards and accolades. The recent example has
been the awarding of ‘Man Booker Prize’ to Arvind Adiga for his book
‘White Tiger’. Here again, the book has depicted India in a very poor
light and all nationalistic Indians have condemned the author for his
‘attitude’. Also the ‘secular’ media in India too follow this tradition
set by western ‘worthies’, as evidenced by NDTV awarding ‘Indian of the
year award’ to M F Hussain, who portrayed Indian Gods and Goddesses and
Bharat Matha in the nude!

 

Similarly
film maker Deepa Mehta has always projected India and her culture in a
very bad light and her films like ‘Fire’ and ‘Water’ are worst
examples. She never bothers about the Indian people and their
sensibilities and sentiments, but mainly focuses on western audience
and their accolades, apart from making money, and for that she never
minds defaming her own mother nation. Likewise Mira Nair is another
example and her films like ‘Salam Bombay’ and ‘Kama Sutra’ belong to
those categories of ‘selling’
India.

 

The
most disgusting fact is that, all these film makers and authors, who
portray India as the worst third world country, are ‘Indians’! And the
government of the day never bothers to restrain them from spreading
falsehoods about India by distorting history and concocting stories.
And most of these ‘intellectuals’, who wax eloquent on the so-called
freedom of speech and freedom of expression, never speak about
‘nationalism’, for they are married and have western spouses and are
mostly settled outside India. They simply follow the trend set by
Katherine Mayo, who depicted India in the worst possible manner in her
book ‘Mother India’, but was rightly snubbed by Gandhiji as ‘gutter
inspector’. 

 

Indians
must follow Gandhiji in this particular regard and condemn people like
Vikas Swarup, Arvind Adiga, Deepa Mehta, et al and that is what Amitabh
Bachchan has done! He has protested the bad depiction of Bombay in the
book ‘Q and A’ and the government must ban such books and movies, so
that, India is not insulted in future.

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