A sign of Indian maturity

By Rahul Singh
INDIANS — and I daresay Pakistanis as well — are touchy about foreigners commenting on them or their country, whether it is in the form of a film or a book.Ironically, however, many of these very films or books have actually benefited India. I shall mention some (there are many) here to make my point.The first is Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, a magnificent film now recognised as a classic, on the founder and moving spirit of the Indian nation, the saintly Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. It was a huge critical and box-office success, winning several Academy Awards, including best actor for Ben Kingsley’s riveting performance as Mahatma Gandhi. It was also great propaganda for India (a film was also made on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, with the same intention, but it was not nearly as successful).On my travels I have met many people whose main knowledge about India and Gandhi is through Attenborough’s iconic film. And there are others who have come to India only because they liked the film so much. So, India should be thankful to Attenborough. No such luck. Believe it or not, Attenborough almost never made the film, such was the opposition in India to a ‘foreigner’ depicting Gandhi on the screen. It was only Indira Gandhi’s support for Attenborough’s venture that saw the film through.Ditto with Freedom at Midnight, a stirring account of how India got its independence, co-authored by a Frenchman, Dominique Lapierre, and an American, Larry Collins. How dare a Frenchman and an American write such a book, said the so-called Indian ‘nationalist’ critics, while picking all kinds of imaginary holes in the narrative. One reviewer even questioned the authenticity of the account in the book of how Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, slept with the airhostess whom he met on his flight to Delhi — until Lapierre pointed out that this was based on a report by the Indian police which Indian historians themselves had not bothered to read!The book sold millions of copies, was translated into several languages and brought tens of thousands of curious foreign tourists to India. If anything, the co-authors should have been honoured by the Indian government. Another book by Lapierre on Calcutta, City of God, got such a hostile reception from some Bengalis that it was almost banned, despite the writer having dedicated his royalties to help the city’s poor.We Indians — and I suspect Pakistanis, too — are pretty ungracious and thin-skinned when it comes to outsiders depicting us, even sympathetically. Which brings me to the most recent controversy surrounding the film, Slumdog Millionaire. It is the biggest thing to happen to India since Gandhi won 10 Oscar nominations. Though the film’s director is British, its subject is very much Indian: the country’s financial capital and the recent victim of a terror attack, Mumbai. More specifically, it is Dharavi, the city’s — in fact, Asia’s — largest slum, a cesspool of poverty and crime, but also a beacon of hope for some.Slumdog Millionaire, based on a book, Q&A, by Vikas Swarup, a diplomat who is currently India’s high commissioner in South Africa, revolves around the popular TV show, ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’. It tells the rags-to-riches story of a poor slum-dweller, Jamal Malik (played by UK-born actor Dev Patel), who overcomes adversity to become the winner of the quiz show. The female lead is Freida Pinto, a Mumbai-based model.Apart from the film itself, it’s the music that has created the most waves. The composer is the painfully shy 38-year-old A.R. Rahman, whom Time magazine once dubbed as “the Mozart of Madras”. His is a remarkable story. Born Dileep Kumar, his father, a film music composer, died when Dileep was only 11. The family was thrown into dire poverty, son and mother trying to eke out a living and Dileep dropping out of school. Then, a Sufi pir visited the family and their fortunes changed for the better.When he was 21, Dileep and his family converted to Islam, he taking the name Allah Rakha Rahman. The same year, director Mani Ratnam, commissioned him to write the score for his film, Roja. The music, with its magical blend of various influences (a major one being that of the late Pakistani singer and composer, Nusrat Fateh Ali) stunned Indians. A succession of successful scores followed. Today, Rahman is widely considered the best film composer the country has ever produced. More significantly perhaps, his music, with elements of pop, blues, African beats, jazz, Indian classical, hip-hop, rap, opera, sufi, Arabian sounds and folk, transcends national boundaries, making him universal. That is his true genius.But there always has to be a spoiler in India and it came in the form of icon Amitabh Bachchan. In his blog, he said, “Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a Third World, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots”, while adding, self-righteously, “Let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.”Bachchan has since then backtracked, saying rather defensively that his words were “misinterpreted” and blown out of proportion. Even more surprisingly, very few Indians have supported Bachchan, an icon otherwise. I find that to be a positive sign that India is changing for the better. Some years back, the film would have been widely condemned, perhaps even banned in India. Today, it is cause for celebration, “dirty underbelly” notwithstanding. Perhaps India has finally begun to mature.The writer is a former editor of the Reader’s Digest and Indian Express.