03-05-2009, 03:06 AM
Saturday, February 28, 2009
<b>INDIA: POVERTY, AND CLICHES SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE </b>
Translated from original French article with GOOGLE TRANSLATE
Why, as a film Slumdog Millionaire, which conveys a negative image of India - slums, exploitation, poverty, corruption, anti Muslim pogroms - meeting he so successful in the West?
By François Gautier, ancien correspondent du Figaro in South Asia, editor of the Journal of India (lesbelles.lettres.com)
There are several answers:
1. When the missionaries began to evangelize India, they quickly realized that Hinduism was a religion that was not only practiced by a huge majority, but it was deeply rooted in the mentality of Indians. They therefore decided to blacken the 'defects' of the Hindu religion, by multiplying by one hundred: caste, poverty, child marriage, superstition, sort of widows, sati ... Today, these stereotypes persist and focus on the 'image we have of India
2. We, Westerners continue to suffer from a superiority complex in relation to peoples of the Third World in general and India in particular. Sitting in front of our television time information, a steak frites before us, we like to feel sorry for the misery of others, it flatters our ego. That is why books such as the City of Joy Dominique Lapierre, which give the impression that India is a vast slum, or a film Slumdog Millionaire, deftly handling the half-lies, have a such impact.
3. In this film, the enemies of India join hands. Today, billions of dollars that gullible parishioners give to charity used to convert the poorest in India. Once converted, they are taught to hate their culture, their religion, thus creating an imbalance in the Indian psyche. Islamic fundamentalism ruthlessly hounds also against India, as demonstrated by the recent bombings in Mumbai. Indian communists are in power in three states, made alliance with the Adventists (and other radical Protestant sects) and the fundamentalist Muslims against Hindus. And finally, the over-Americanization also seriously social and cultural capital of India. Slumdog plays on all these pictures of a misleading way.
4. Closer to home, in France, French Indian, played by researchers in South Asia of CNRS, and its affiliates such as EHESS, has often been the vehicle for misérabilisme: caste, poverty and of 'denial': the 'Hindu fundamentalism'. Can be done most glaring contradiction? Hinduism has shown throughout its history a remarkable tolerance to the Christians of Syria, Arab merchants, the Parsees of Zoroaster, the Jews of Jerusalem, persecuted at home, to settle in India and 'practice their religion freely. At the beginning of the film, Jamal's mother has throat cut by Hindu fanatics. But it is the Muslims who slaughter live a Daniel Pearl and broadcast the film on the internet - never the Hindus. Riots in India are always initiated by the Muslims: the anti-pogroms in Gujarat were triggered because 59 Hindus, including 36 women and children, were burned as in dogs in a train by a mob of Muslims.
5. And finally, it is true that the Indians, because they have been colonized for so long (unlike the Chinese) do not have a lot of national pride and are sometimes even proud of being criticized. Today much of the intellectual elite of India has lost touch with its cultural roots as well as spiritual and only look to the West to solve its problems, ignoring its own tools, which are very old and possess infinite wisdom . It is the eternal history of the colonized become more sectarian than the settlers.
How else that Slumdog Millionaire, which literally defecating on India from the first frame (a child who plunges into a sea of crap to get an autograph of Amitabh Bacchan), is a tobacco? Some scenes from the film are, however, in the perverted imagery of director Danny Boyle, because we can not find them in the book by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat, whose film is based. The hero of the film (which is not Muslim, but many religions: Ram Mohammad Thomas) does not pass his childhood in Bombay, but in a Catholic orphanage in Delhi. Jamal's mother is not killed by "Hindu fanatics' in the book, but she abandons her baby, of unknown religion in a church. Jamal torture is not a television presenter, but an American who wants the Russian who bought the television rights of the game. The scene of tears three children abandoned in the rain is also not in the book. Jamal and his heroine from colliding when they are teenagers and they live in an apartment and not in a slum.
And finally, yes, there still exists in India of poverty and glaring gaps between rich and poor, but those who know something about the slums of Bombay, know that most of the inhabitants belong to the whole ' small 'middle class (relative to income in India) that every house in the slums has a TV antenna and most of the residents worked in the city.
When the West lay there another way of looking at India, more just, free of prejudices still attached to this country that should supplant China in this century? But this will require a new generation of Indiana more sincere, less tied to outdated values, rises in France ...
fgautier26@gmail.com
francoisgautier.com
Read: Un Autre Regard sur l'Inde (Tricorne Publishing, 1999), François Gautier.
Caravan interior by Francois Gautier (Les Belles Lettres, 2005)
The French India (France Loisirs, 2008), by the same author.
http://francoisgautier1.blogspot.com/2009/...es-slumdog.html
<b>INDIA: POVERTY, AND CLICHES SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE </b>
Translated from original French article with GOOGLE TRANSLATE
Why, as a film Slumdog Millionaire, which conveys a negative image of India - slums, exploitation, poverty, corruption, anti Muslim pogroms - meeting he so successful in the West?
By François Gautier, ancien correspondent du Figaro in South Asia, editor of the Journal of India (lesbelles.lettres.com)
There are several answers:
1. When the missionaries began to evangelize India, they quickly realized that Hinduism was a religion that was not only practiced by a huge majority, but it was deeply rooted in the mentality of Indians. They therefore decided to blacken the 'defects' of the Hindu religion, by multiplying by one hundred: caste, poverty, child marriage, superstition, sort of widows, sati ... Today, these stereotypes persist and focus on the 'image we have of India
2. We, Westerners continue to suffer from a superiority complex in relation to peoples of the Third World in general and India in particular. Sitting in front of our television time information, a steak frites before us, we like to feel sorry for the misery of others, it flatters our ego. That is why books such as the City of Joy Dominique Lapierre, which give the impression that India is a vast slum, or a film Slumdog Millionaire, deftly handling the half-lies, have a such impact.
3. In this film, the enemies of India join hands. Today, billions of dollars that gullible parishioners give to charity used to convert the poorest in India. Once converted, they are taught to hate their culture, their religion, thus creating an imbalance in the Indian psyche. Islamic fundamentalism ruthlessly hounds also against India, as demonstrated by the recent bombings in Mumbai. Indian communists are in power in three states, made alliance with the Adventists (and other radical Protestant sects) and the fundamentalist Muslims against Hindus. And finally, the over-Americanization also seriously social and cultural capital of India. Slumdog plays on all these pictures of a misleading way.
4. Closer to home, in France, French Indian, played by researchers in South Asia of CNRS, and its affiliates such as EHESS, has often been the vehicle for misérabilisme: caste, poverty and of 'denial': the 'Hindu fundamentalism'. Can be done most glaring contradiction? Hinduism has shown throughout its history a remarkable tolerance to the Christians of Syria, Arab merchants, the Parsees of Zoroaster, the Jews of Jerusalem, persecuted at home, to settle in India and 'practice their religion freely. At the beginning of the film, Jamal's mother has throat cut by Hindu fanatics. But it is the Muslims who slaughter live a Daniel Pearl and broadcast the film on the internet - never the Hindus. Riots in India are always initiated by the Muslims: the anti-pogroms in Gujarat were triggered because 59 Hindus, including 36 women and children, were burned as in dogs in a train by a mob of Muslims.
5. And finally, it is true that the Indians, because they have been colonized for so long (unlike the Chinese) do not have a lot of national pride and are sometimes even proud of being criticized. Today much of the intellectual elite of India has lost touch with its cultural roots as well as spiritual and only look to the West to solve its problems, ignoring its own tools, which are very old and possess infinite wisdom . It is the eternal history of the colonized become more sectarian than the settlers.
How else that Slumdog Millionaire, which literally defecating on India from the first frame (a child who plunges into a sea of crap to get an autograph of Amitabh Bacchan), is a tobacco? Some scenes from the film are, however, in the perverted imagery of director Danny Boyle, because we can not find them in the book by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat, whose film is based. The hero of the film (which is not Muslim, but many religions: Ram Mohammad Thomas) does not pass his childhood in Bombay, but in a Catholic orphanage in Delhi. Jamal's mother is not killed by "Hindu fanatics' in the book, but she abandons her baby, of unknown religion in a church. Jamal torture is not a television presenter, but an American who wants the Russian who bought the television rights of the game. The scene of tears three children abandoned in the rain is also not in the book. Jamal and his heroine from colliding when they are teenagers and they live in an apartment and not in a slum.
And finally, yes, there still exists in India of poverty and glaring gaps between rich and poor, but those who know something about the slums of Bombay, know that most of the inhabitants belong to the whole ' small 'middle class (relative to income in India) that every house in the slums has a TV antenna and most of the residents worked in the city.
When the West lay there another way of looking at India, more just, free of prejudices still attached to this country that should supplant China in this century? But this will require a new generation of Indiana more sincere, less tied to outdated values, rises in France ...
fgautier26@gmail.com
francoisgautier.com
Read: Un Autre Regard sur l'Inde (Tricorne Publishing, 1999), François Gautier.
Caravan interior by Francois Gautier (Les Belles Lettres, 2005)
The French India (France Loisirs, 2008), by the same author.
http://francoisgautier1.blogspot.com/2009/...es-slumdog.html