New Divide

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. - Albert Einstein

Remember the time when Slumdog Millionaire was criticized for showing India in a poor light? Or when some idiot asked Aravind Adiga to apologize for writing White Tiger? Chances are high that you do not.

I remember the exact date when I saw Slumdog. It was December 29th and we all were huddled in a friend's room in the hostel, watching the movie late into the night. For the uninitiated, Slumdog Millionaire was released in India on January 23rd (almost a month AFTER I had seen it). But this post is not about piracy. This post is about India.

White Tiger (Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize winning novel) talks of two India(s) - India of Light and India of Darkness. He talks mostly about the India of Darkness where corruption is rampant, poverty forces children out of schools, the rich get away with murder, politicians fill their pockets with the common man's hard-earned money and the government remains indifferent. Somehow this India seems familiar to me.

Frankly, I saw nothing wrong with the book. People who claimed that the book showed India in a poor light should...well... go out often. It is true that Art imitates Life. They said that the author focused on only the bad aspects of living in India. Well, he IS a writer of fiction. He drew everyone's attention to the deplorable condition of the masses. He brought forward issues like Casteism that are often brushed under the carpet, irrespective of the fact that they are more rampant than ever. Reservation on the basis of caste, whether for higher or lower classes, is casteism nonetheless. Such efforts need to be lauded, not discouraged.

Slumdog was the story of rags-to-riches. From Hindu-Muslim riots to the gangsters residing in Mumbai's underbelly, the movie tried to show some of the things that were wrong with the country. However, the scene involving Amitabh Bachchan was wrongly glorified. Instead of saying things like "That was disgusting!" Big B should have questioned whether the human excrete Jamaal dived into was fake or not. After all, human rights of the child were involved.

The reason why some people found Slumdog atrocious was due to the stereotypes generated by the silver screen and the idiot-box. The poor working class hero of any YashRaj or Karan Johar film wears Gucci/Armani to work...everyday. The never-ending Saas-Bahu sagas feature divorces in which the poor hero has to give Rs 250 Crore as alimony to his ex-wife. No wonder people have trouble digesting the fact that nearly one-third of the population is not able to arrange for one square meal a day.

There is an interesting fact about ostriches. Whenever an ostrich feels that it is under attack, it buries its head in the ground assuming that if it cannot see the enemy, the enemy cannot see it. Ostrich hunters have whale of a time shooting such sitting ducks (did you notice the alliteration?). The people who believe that movies like Slumdog Millionaire or books like White Tiger are bad because they depict the truth are just like ostriches. Such morons have the notion that if they do not talk about a problem, it will go away. This notion is true if applied to attention-mongers like Rakhi Sawant (if you do NOT watch Rakhi Ka Swayamvar, chances are that you won't have to watch Rakhi Ka Divorce, or even Rakhi Ka Swayamvar Season Two), but not in case of problems that have plagued our country for years (Reservation, corruption, religious discrimination etc)

To summarize, there are issues which are more important than Rakhi marrying that bald Canadian guy. Issues that have been put aside for too long. Issues that need to be resolved before they divide the country even further.