Slumdogs or Dumbdogs?

The Oscar fever is subsiding (!!!????) ….Is India flying high as Anil Kapoor screamed into the microphone? May be, if not all at least a quarter of its population is. Yes…Slumdog Millionaire has won eight Oscars…a few Indians have won Oscars too!! As Indians we should feel proud about it. Not because they have won the Oscars per se but because they and their work have been recognized by an entertainment agency considered supreme (rightly or wrongly) in the world. The President and the Prime Minister of India have congratulated the winners…more politicians will follow suit, may be with cash awards too. Political compulsions perhaps! I have nothing to lose and I will be very forthright therefore. As I watched the ‘tamasha’ on TV, the mockery of the slum dogs and the dumb dogs came to light. I’m sure even the diehard fans of Rehman or Gulzaar or Pookutty would agree to the fact that these men have created better works than this. Why the Oscars now, then? The irony is we need the British or the foreign label for recognition. Unless and until a foreign body, preferably from the west certifies our works we cannot and will not believe in ourselves. Sad but true. But for Danny Boyle and his crew our work would perhaps have seen no light let alone the Oscar limelight. Isn’t it sad that we still have to rely on the white man or the English voice to be able to ‘succeed’? Secondly, for the white audience the voice of their m(a)en is more authentic and more credible than that of the native –he knows and understands better the cruelty and the poverty of the slums in India …..he can capture it all, with all its myriad hues in no time, too because he comes from a land that ‘knows’ India…How ridiculous…. haven’t we made films on the same theme earlier which more poignantly told the story of the slums… haven’t we heard before better songs of Rehman than Jaiho? I have and Of course we have. But without a Danny Boyle and his men, you see!! So who cares? So is the Oscar something that we must feel proud of or is it something that should make us feel if not ashamed at least a bit uneasy? I don’t know. But I think it should definitely make us think.