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vcindiana
08 February 2009, 06:16 AM
“Slum dog millionaire” is a beautiful movie despite some criticism especially from India. I did watch this recently. My only criticism was Bollywoodizing the ending of the movie. I do not think it does any good to these slum kids. I am afraid there is no such thing as “they lived happily forever “ in real life. The kids have acted remarkably well. The movie did bring some joyful tears to me when I thought about the decision I made 20 years ago to find one of these not so fortunate to be part of my family. This person has grown up to be a beautiful and has taught many lessons of Grace to me much more than what this person has received. These are children of God with huge potential. Love them if you ever get a chance.

Love......................VC

satay
08 February 2009, 02:37 PM
Hello Vc,
I didn't see what was so special about the movie. I would like to see a movie about the dogs living in slums in the west.

Re adopting, did you have to go through a lot of paper work and agencies? Just curious, how long it took and how much it cost 20 years ago? Please PM me if you get a chance and if you want to share.

Thanks,

vcindiana
14 February 2009, 03:27 PM
Hello Vc,
I didn't see what was so special about the movie. I would like to see a movie about the dogs living in slums in the west.

Thanks,

Dear Satay,

You may find this movie made by a Westerner disgusting. I do not blame you. I grew up in an India Village and a major city and I have personally experienced the pathetic condition of these kinds of people. Fortunately I was born to a “Higher” class family and I was told it was their “fate” or “Karma” to live like that. I was then numb and too slow to recognize my own blindness. It is a paradox, only after coming to this rich country I could open my eyes and to start looking into the realities. I know it is a drop in a bucket but I am glad at least I made a small difference in one of these lost human beings. I am not trying to brag about what I did but to tell you how much more I received than giving. About a year ago my conscience made me to build community based 10 latrines in a rural area. It was well received especially from the women folks of the village.

I know this is not perfectly done movie. But the highlight of this movie is that it has treated people from the slums with deep respect and has shown them as HUMAN beings. I find this movie if anything should inspire people especially from India to cross the boundary of religion, doctrines, castes and social bars and see what each can do and NOT counting on politicians and Government. Living in the Western world we do have an advantage and I feel it is our Dharma to care for our least privileged ones.

Some may find the word “dog’ in this movie derogatory but it was derived from the word “underdog”, these are underperformers or underachievers.
In my humble opinion it deserves Oscar.

Love....................VC

satay
14 February 2009, 08:55 PM
Namaskar,

Like I said, I didn't see anything special in the movie but then again I am still an Indian at heart.

What would be interesting to watch is a movie about dogs living in slums in the west, especially England. Any of the acts shown in the movie have actually been done by westerners to their own or to people of other race.
If such a movie is made depicting the slums of US, Canada or England, especially if it is made by an Indian director I am sure it will win an oscar. ;)

Don't you think?

vcindiana
14 February 2009, 10:37 PM
Namaskar,

Like I said, I didn't see anything special in the movie but then again I am still an Indian at heart.

What would be interesting to watch is a movie about dogs living in slums in the west, especially England. Any of the acts shown in the movie have actually been done by westerners to their own or to people of other race.
If such a movie is made depicting the slums of US, Canada or England, especially if it is made by an Indian director I am sure it will win an oscar. ;)

Don't you think?

Dear Satay:
There are so many movies and TV serials made by westerners about the slavery and other dehumanizing stories in US and England. Didn’t you watch the TV serial “Roots”? These slaves were treated worse than dogs. One of my favorite movies is “Amazing Grace”’ (English) these were real stories highlighting the human injustice. Many of them did receive awards. When the injustice is shown through the TV or movies people do react.
Talking about injustice if you ever find time please visit MLK museum in Memphis Tennessee and the Holocaust museum in NY, I highly recommend these (especially for people like us living in the Western world ), the slum dogs in the movie look pallor compared to these.
Are you still interested in adoption?
Love.............VC

satay
15 February 2009, 12:33 AM
Namaskar,


Dear Satay:
There are so many movies and TV serials made by westerners about the slavery and other dehumanizing stories in US and England.

I don't recall any such movie made by Indian director. Surely, if made that will win everyone's hearts and the oscars too.

Re adoption, I had a few questions. I will PM you.

Philippe*
23 February 2009, 11:38 AM
Hi,

This movie has been widely appreciated and considered special here in France, and it is on the whole very positive for India. It is not perceived the same way for a lot of people living in India but this movie has been made for an international public. Of course the scene with Hindu riots can be seen as offensive, and one can wonder what a kid disguized in Rama is doing in such a place (?) and it does not at all reflect the noble Rama and the dharmic ideals, it is also to show that it does happen with other religious communities such as Hindus seen as peaceful people in the West, not just with muslims which almost everybody knows already here in the West (and no fear to be beheaded for that). Moreover I think that it is more interpretated as offensive towards religion on the whole and not specifically Hinduism... As for poverty, this is a reality, not just in Mumbai, there are some Westerners so conditioned by the material comfort coming back traumatized for months if not the rest of their life from such places, but on the other hand it also shows the fast-growing India which counts in the world, it doesn't give at all a tamasic image of the country, quite the contrary.

Philippe

satay
09 April 2009, 10:41 AM
Francois Gautier
March 16, 2009

WHY did a film like Slumdog Millionaire, which conveys an utterly negative image of India — slums, exploitation, poverty, corruption, anti Muslim pogroms — create so many waves in the West, pre and post Oscars? And why does not the Indian government protest, as the Chinese would indeed have, for a twisted and perverted portrayal of its own reality? There are several answers: When the missionaries began to evangelise India, they quickly realised that Hinduism was not only practised by a huge majority, but that it was so deeply rooted that it stood as the only barrier to their subjugating the entire subcontinent.

They therefore decided to demonise the religion, by multiplying what they perceived as its faults, by one hundred: caste, poverty, child marriage, superstition, widows, sati … Today, these exaggerations, which at best are based on quarter-truths, have come down to us and have been embedded not only in the minds of many Westerners, but also unfortunately, of much of India’s intelligentsia.

We Westerners continue to suffer from a superiority complex over the socalled Third World in general and India in particular. Sitting in front of our television sets during prime time news, with a hefty steak on our table, we love to feel sorry for the misery of others, it secretly flatters our ego and makes us proud of our so-called ‘achievements’.

That is why books such as The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre, which gives the impression that India is a vast slum, or a film like Slumdog Millionaire, have such an impact.

In this film, India’s foes have joined hands. Today, billions of dollars that innocent Westerners give to charity are used to convert the poorest of India with the help of enticements such as free medical aid, schooling and loans.

If you see the Tamil Nadu coast posttsunami, there is a church every 500 metres. Once converted, these new Christians are taught that it is a sin to enter a temple, do puja, or even put tilak on one’s head, thus creating an imbalance in the Indian psyche (In an interview to a British newspaper, Danny Boyle confessed he wanted to be a Christian missionary when he was young and that he is still very much guided by these ideals — so much for his impartiality).

Islamic fundamentalism also ruthlessly hounds India, as demonstrated by the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, which are reminiscent of the brutality and savagery of a Timur, who killed 1,00,000 Hindus in a single act of savagery.

Indian communists, in power in three states, are also hard at work to dismantle India’s cultural and spiritual inheritance. And finally, the Americanisation of India is creating havoc in the social and cultural fabric with its superficial glitter, even though it has proved a failure in the West. Slumdog plays cleverly with all these elements.

Many of the West’s India-specialists are staunchly anti-Hindu, both because of their Christian upbringing and also as they perpetuate the tradition of Max Mueller, the first ‘Sankritist’ who said: “The Vedas is full of childish, silly, even monstrous conceptions. It is tedious, low, commonplace, it represents human nature on a low level of selfishness and worldliness and only here and there are a few rare sentiments that come from the depths of the soul”.

This tradition is carried over by Indologists such as Witzel or Wendy Doniger in the US, and in France where scholars of the state-sponsored CNRS, and its affiliates such as EHESS, are always putting across in their books and articles detrimental images of India: caste, poverty, slums — and more than anything — their pet theories about ‘Hindu fundamentalism’.
Can there be a more blatant lie? Hinduism has given refuge throughout the ages to those who were persecuted at home: the Christians of Syria, the Parsees, Armenians, the Jews of Jerusalem, and today the Tibetans, allowing them all to practise their religion freely.

And finally, it is true that Indians, because they have been colonised for so long (unlike the Chinese) lack nationalism.
Today much of the intellectual elite of India has lost touch with its cultural roots and looks to the West to solve its problems, ignoring its own tools, such as pranayama, hata-yoga or meditation, which are very old and possess infinite wisdom.

Slumdog literally defecates on India from the first frame. Some scenes exist only in the perverted imagery of director Danny Boyle, because they are not in the book of Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat, on which the film is based. In the book, the hero of the film (who is not Muslim, but belongs to many religions: Ram Mohammad Thomas) does not spend his childhood in Bombay, but in a Catholic orphanage in Delhi. Jamal’s mother is not killed by “Hindu fanatics’, but she abandons her baby, of unknown religion, in a church. Jamal’s torture is not an idea of the television presenter, but of an American who is after the Russian who bought the television rights of the game. The tearful scene of the three children abandoned in the rain is also not in the book: Jamal and his heroine only meet when they are teenagers and they live in an apartment and not in a slum.

And finally, yes, there still exists in India a lot of poverty and glaring gaps between the very rich and the extremely poor, but there is also immense wealth, both physical, spiritual and cultural — much more than in the West as a matter of fact.

When will the West learn to look with less prejudice at India, a country that will supplant China in this century as the main Asian power? But this will require a new generation of Indologists, more sincere, less attached to their outdated Christian values, and Indians more proud of their own culture and less subservient to the West.

http://francoisgautier.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/religion-marxism-and-slumdog/

dhruva023
09 April 2009, 03:24 PM
Following the euphoria over British production Slumdog Millionaire bagging Oscars at the Academy Awards, the image managers of the Congress went ahead buying rights to use the theme score of the movie as their campaign anthem. There could not have been a more immature and counterproductive move.

The Congress bought the rights of Slumdog Millionaire’s hit song Jai Ho for Rs 1 crore. Party’s image managers have planned to play the song, in fact they are already being played, during rallies in rural towns, villages and cities across the country. The party is also planning to get the child actors of the film to campaign. The children spent a day at the Congress office recently posing in full media glare waving pictures of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The move is all set to backfire on them.

Slumdog Millionaire being lapped-up at the Academy Awards is one thing and the film winning approbation by the Indian Nation another. Many years ago I recall my teacher of Modern Novels telling us about the literary tools used by the British authors to run down India. Teaching A Passage to India, the redoubtable Dr Narinder Singh Pradhan, illustrated from passage after passage how the author lampooned the Indian characters.

Danny Boyle, I am sorry to write, in his film fails to overcome the psyche of “it’s a white man’s burden to civilize the coloured nation.” There is nothing to do Jai Ho (hail) about India and the Indian people in the film. It’s an instrument to run down the Indian character. I have no problems with projecting evils in the society but I have a problem in showing all the Indians as people not having character.

The film’s screenplay makes conscious deviations from the novel to portray everything bad in India. The communal riots of Mumbai has no role in the book. The protagonist in the book is rather portrayed as an epitome of secular bonhomie. He is not named Jamal in the book but Ram Mohammad Thomas. He has been given this name, a combination of a Hindu name, a Muslim name and a Christian name, by the village elders after his mother abandoned him at birth. Ram grows up in an orphanage where he has all residents as his brothers and sisters. Salim is one such brother at the orphanage.

He is later adopted by a Christian priest who teaches him English language. The novel has an episode about a visiting priest who tries to molest Ram. The screenplay gives a complete miss to the episode of the Christian priests. How could the film have a Christian priest being shown in poor light as they are in India only to save the Pagans?

It’s not that every film made by the British on India fails to get the approval of the Indian people. Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was not only acclaimed at the Oscars but was also the biggest box office grosser in India that year. Decades after Gandhi was made, it still has a popular following whenever screened on the television.

The BJP has been quick in its criticism of the Congress for patenting the AR Rahman number claiming that they are responsible for the slums in India which continues to fetch Oscars for British imperialists like Danny Boyle. In fact they have brought out there own version of the number – Bhay ho (I fear).

Congress has been responsible several things good that have happened in this country like the green, telecom and computer revolution as the party’s other television advertisement – Yeh hath—depicts. The Congress must develop the confidence to campaign on the basis of its own performance rather than piggy ride on gimmicks which makes it lose its visage of the party which means serious business.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/166077/Congress-should-slam-Slumdog-Millionaire.html

This is why I dont like that film, It has been made with single target in mind.

yajvan
09 April 2009, 04:34 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

Namasté



Francois Gautier
March 16, 2009

And finally, yes, there still exists in India a lot of poverty and glaring gaps between the very rich and the extremely poor, but there is also immense wealth, both physical, spiritual and cultural — much more than in the West as a matter of fact.

I watched this British film. There is no doubt that it is graphically striking. Yet when I watched, this story could have easily taken place in the USA , or Mexico, or South America. In these countries the same exists - poverty, the challenge of growing up on the streets, and man exploiting man.

The story at its heart (IMHO) is more then a story of India, yet it took place there. It is a story of how one survives, faces adversity how chance (daivayoga¹) and perhaps prārabhdha¹ karma may be active in one's life.

I was greatly attracted to both the young boys' innovation for staying alive and standing up to adversity. There was a goodness that peaked through all the adversity life threw at Jamal & Salim.

I asked myself, how would I act in these cases, could I rise to the occasion as these two boys did?

I most enjoyed life's lessons and how they applied to each of the questions Jamal was presented with - I myself thought that was brilliant, yet the discomfort of those 'lessons' and what took place were in fact disturbing.

In the end the 'bad' guys lost. Yet all along the way, the answers to how Jamal was able to address the final question applied in his life i.e.
How did he do it?
(A) He cheated - yes many times he had to do this to eat, and live.
(B) He's lucky - his luck was there and saved his life on many occasions.
(C) He's a genius - he as able to be innovative with the intellect and tools he gained from life.
(D) It is written - for me, there was no doubt that when you look back at the story and all the things that occurred, 'it is written' is the message here, and could have only been told on the soil of Bhārat Gaṇarājya, yet applies to all on this good earth.


praṇām

words

daivayoga दैवयोग - the juncture of fate, fortune, or chance ; and/or the dispensation of fate
prārabhdha प्रारब्ध commenced , begun , undertaken; one who has commenced or begun. Use here, in this application , it is that karma coming to fruition now

atanu
10 April 2009, 11:09 AM
hariḥ oṁ
(D) It is written - for me, there was no doubt that when you look back at the story and all the things that occurred, 'it is written' is the message here, and could have only been told on the soil of Bhārat Gaṇarājya, yet applies to all on this good earth.


praṇām

in this application , it is that karma coming to fruition now


Namaskar Yajvan Ji,

A nice evaluation. Frankly speaking, I liked some other films (such as Tare Zameen Par) much more that the 'Slum Dog', and I think that the accolades in the form of sudden rush of awards is all sham. My 10 year old nephew tells me that the west, in order to gain market -- in TV space and in all spheres of life, are creating Indian heroes, such as wrestling hero Khali etc.

I do not dis-believe my 10 year old nephew.

However, I read an interview of Shri Boyle, wherein He quoted Woody Allen to re-emphasize that Gods laugh when men say "I did it", "I will do it" etc. Boyle said that in India, Gods create laugh riot when a man claims such doership. Boyle is bang on the point in respect of 'Daivam' and that was the finest point of his film. And in this respect Danny Boyle is a Hindu.

It is separate matter altogether that there are ulterior motives to shower awards on the film suddenly (Though that too is daivam).


Om

Ganeshprasad
10 April 2009, 12:49 PM
Pranam All

I did not see this movie but then i don't see much movies anyway, all this fuss was made about it yet i had no inclination what so ever, simply because the west for some reason has never highlighted anything good India.
I had a friend emailed this to me, makes an interesting read.
I post it here, i hope it works

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Jai Shree Krishna

satay
10 April 2009, 02:33 PM
Namaskar GaneshPrasad,


Pranam All
I had a friend emailed this to me, makes an interesting read.
I post it here, i hope it works
Jai Shree Krishna

None of the links you posted are working.

Ganeshprasad
10 April 2009, 03:48 PM
Pranam Satay

Sorry i realised this and i cant get it to work, i do have it in my email the whole critical analyses, but even that i can't copy paste it for some reason, sorry.

Jai Shree Krishna