By Charles R. Larson

After all the international controversy about Slumdog Millionaire, if Hollywood crowns the film with an Oscar for the best movie of the year, Indians, I suspect, are going to have much to crow about. How ironic that a half a year ago the movie’s investors feared that they had made a real dog—a film that would interest no one—and were considering dumping it directly on DVD with no release in movie theatres around the world. Can the movie moguls (mughals?) have been so myopic that they had no idea of the film’s importance?
Then the slow release, mostly in art-houses in the United States and England, rather than the big cineplexes, and the increasingly positive word-of-mouth (still in the West), followed by the surprise Golden Globe Award as best film of the year along with several other significant awards for music and acting. And at the time Slumdog Millionaire hadn’t even been released in India.

I was traveling in India when all the brouhaha about the film exploded. Many Indians were ecstatic about all the attention and the subsequent awards the film rapidly acquired: everything about Danny Boyle’s film was happening so quickly. Reviews of the movie (which officially opened in India on Friday, January 23rd) were positive, even glowing. Pirated copies of the film were selling everywhere for as little as 40 rupees, less than a dollar. The Indian press was overflowing with articles about the film, photos of the actors, the director and the composer, and interviews with Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A, the novel that became the basis for the film.

A typical review—for example, Khalid Mohamed’s in The Hindustan Times (Jan. 24)—began by proclaiming, “There’s reason to dance on the streets.” Mohamed gave the film five stars, the highest possible ranking, and ended his glowing evaluation by stating, “Literally every performance rocks. Still, your heart goes out most of all to Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Rubiana Ali, the kids who portray the knee-high Jamal, Salim, and Latika. They’re extraordinary just like the rest of Slumdog Millionaire. As one of the songs goes, Jai jo!”

Then the attacks on the film began, generally arguing that the unflattering representation of Mumbai—especially the poverty—lock India into stereotypes that Westerners are already too quick to assume. Arindam Chaudhuri, in The Times of India (Feb 2nd), excoriated that the film “sucks,” describing the movie as “A phony poseur that has been made only to mock India for the viewing pleasure of the First World!!” The film “illogically shows every negative thing about India happening in the protagonist’s life…slums, open-air lavatories, riots, underworld, prostitution, brothels, child labour, begging, blinding and maiming of kids to make them into ‘better beggars,’ petty peddlers, traffic jams, irresponsible call centre executives….”
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Slumdog Millionaire’s Dehumanizing View of India’s Poor

By Mitu Sengupta

Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most celebrated films of recent times, tells the rags-to-rajah story of a love-struck boy, Jamal, who, with a little help from “destiny,” triumphs over his wretched beginnings in Mumbai’s squalid slums. Riding on a wave of rave reviews, Slumdog is now poised to win Hollywood’s highest tribute, the Academy Award for Best Picture. This honour could add some US$100 million to Slumdog’s box-office revenues, as Oscar wins usually do. But it will also enhance the film’s already-robust reputation as an authentic representation of the lives of India’s urban poor. So far, most of the awards collected by the film have been accepted in the name of “the children,” suggesting that its own cast is promoting it not as an entertaining, cinematically spectacular work of fiction, which it is, but as a powerful tool of advocacy. Nothing could be more worrying, as Slumdog, despite all hype to the contrary, delivers a disempowering narrative about the poor that renders hollow its apparent message of social justice.

Many Indians are angered by Slumdog because it tarnishes their country’s image as a rising economic power and beacon of democracy. While understandable, this is not defensible. Though at times embarrassingly contrived, most of the film’s heartrending scenarios reflect a sad, but well-documented reality. Torture is not unheard of among the police, though none is surely dim enough to target an articulate man who is also a rising media phenomenon. Beggar-makers do round-up abandoned children and mutilate them to make them more sympathetic, though such a child will unlikely ever chance upon a $100 bill, much less be capable of identifying it by touch alone.

If anything, Boyle’s magical tale, with its unconvincing one-dimensional characters and absurd plot devices, understates the depth of suffering among India’s poor. It is impossible, for example, that Jamal would emerge from his ravaged life with a dewy complexion and upper-class accent. The real problem with Slumdog, however, is not its shallow portrayal of poverty, but its minimizing of the capabilities and even basic humanity of those it claims to speak for.
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By Somini Sengupta

Its depictions of filth and brutality fueled angry blogging and stray street protests. It drew unusually intense scrutiny, from how much its child actors were paid to what the composer A.R. Rahman would wear to the Oscars. But on Monday, as India woke up to news of the spectacular wins by “Slumdog Millionaire” at the Academy Awards, this movie-mad country went “Jai Ho.”

The victory by “Slumdog” was embraced as India’s own.
“What a day it has been for India!” gushed a television news anchor mid- morning. It dominated television news throughout the day. News of a hepatitis B outbreak in western Gujarat State and a southern politician’s threatened hunger strike seemed minor news by comparison.
“We rocked the world,” an Indian percussionist named Sivamani declared.

Never mind that “Slumdog” tells a story of stunted, shafted slum children, precisely a story that promoters of the New India have diligently sought to obscure with tales of prosperity and bling. India seized on its Oscar wins as a sign of its arrival on the world stage.
Indian television showed Indian dancers in spangly skirts on stage at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles and Mr. Rahman, eyes closed, singing the title track, “Jai Ho” — an exuberant Hindi phrase that literally translates as “victory.” Mr. Rahman thanked God and his mother. Resul Pookutty, who shared the prize for sound mixing, dedicated it to his country. In his small town in south India, neighbors and kin were shown passing a big plate of sweets and crying tears of joy.

“India has made a clean sweep here,” Anil Kapoor, the Indian actor who played the game-show host in “Slumdog,” declared in an interview with NDTV, a private television station.
On Monday, even the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, congratulated the “Slumdog” team, along with the makers of “Smile Pinki,” a short documentary about a village girl with a cleft palate.
“The winners have done India proud,” Singh’s office said in a statement. The statement did not specify whether the prime minister, who is recovering from heart surgery, had seen either movie.
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The world’s nearly 6,000 languages will be celebrated on International Mother Language Day, an event aimed at promoting linguistic diversity and multilingual education.

Ensuring that these languages can continue in use alongside the major international languages of communication is a genuine challenge to countries worldwide.

Today, about half of the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world are under threat

This year’s theme will be devoted to the topic of languages and cyberspace.
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(Submitted by Rohila Pritam)

By Ayesha Siddiqa

Ayesha Siddiqa speculates on the challenges which face this country in future years as part of Dawn.com’s launch special ‘Flash Forward Pakistan: Where do we go from here?’

Recently, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani lauded the role Sufi Islam could play in keeping the society away from religious extremism. Lest we consider this a personal bias, since he represents the Sufi tradition himself, similar sentiments were expressed by others as well. One such example is the 2007 RAND Corporation paper, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, which identifies Sufi Islam as one of the potential forces within an Islamic society that must be strengthened to fight the rising intolerance, extremism, and violence in Muslim societies. Although the RAND report pertained to the Middle East, it could be equally applied to Pakistan, which suffers from a high risk of religious conservatism often bordering on extremism.
Pakistan, in fact, makes an interesting case study for the battle between Sufi Islam and the much more rabid Salafi Islam for two obvious reasons. First, it is a country with equally dominant traditions and institutions of Sufi Islam that were critical in spreading the religion in the Indian Subcontinent. For that reason, many argue that Punjab, especially southern Punjab, which has drawn international attention particularly after the Mumbai attacks, cannot fall to Salafi Islam because it is a hub of Sufi – or what is popularly known as Barelvi – Islam. The wife of Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Farahnaz Isphani, expressed such views a few months ago in a CNN interview. Second, unlike Turkey, where Sufi institutions were throttled by Kamal Attaturk, or Saudi Arabia, where the state shut down similar institutions to accommodate Salafi Islam, Sufi traditions have continued to thrive in Pakistan.
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The series focuses on the Muslim community in the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan (population 14,000). The primary institutions of the community are the local mosque, presided over by imam Amaar Rashid and located in the rented parish hall of the town’s Anglican church, and Fatima’s Café, a downtown diner run by Fatima Dinssa. The community patriarchs are Yasir Hamoudi, a construction contractor who originally fronted the money to establish the mosque under the pretense that he was renting office space for his business, and Baber Siddiqui, a college economics professor who served as the mosque’s temporary imam until Amaar was hired.
The town of Mercy is governed by Mayor Ann Popowicz. Sarah Hamoudi, Yasir’s wife, works as a public relations officer in Popowicz’s office.
The title alludes to the classic American book and drama series, Little House on the Prairie. The two series are not related (the original true story of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family and writings were Christian based) aside from the direct, albeit slightly modified version, of the title logo.

Watch episodes here
(Submitted by a reader)

By Michael Valpy

The desire is there, but the Prince of Wales has trouble visiting

He’s constitutionally Canada’s next head of state. A top aide says he’s keen to deepen his relationship with the country. He wants to visit, get to know people. He’s arranged meetings with key Canadian philanthropic and community leaders with the aim of cementing connections with his own charitable interests.

So where is he? Find the Prince of Wales. Find Charles Philip Arthur George.
He hasn’t been here for eight years.

He wanted to come to Canada four years ago – to introduce his new wife on her first royal tour – but the federal government told him it likely wasn’t a good idea because there might be an election campaign when he arrived. So he bypassed Canada and took Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, to the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

“You know, His Royal Highness would be keen to maintain and indeed deepen his relationship with Canada, and obviously a visit would be a great step forward in that regard,” the Prince’s spokesman, Paddy Harverson, said in a recent telephone conversation from London.
“But I suppose it comes back to [the] point that that requires an invitation and it requires the timing to be right. The Prince of Wales would very much love to pay a visit to Canada but, as I’ve said, he has to wait for the invitation.”
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(Submitted by AlKarim Amersi)

The drug may alter how the brain deals with memories
Scientists believe a common heart medicine may be able to banish fearful memories from the mind.

The Dutch investigators believe beta-blocker drugs could help people suffering from the emotional after effects of traumatic experiences.
They believe the drug alters how memories are recalled after carrying out the study of 60 people, Nature Neuroscience reports.
But British experts questioned the ethics of tampering with the mind.
Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said he was concerned about the “fundamentally pharmacological” approach to people with problems such as phobias and anxiety.

“Before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on individuals.”
Medical ethics expert Dr Daniel Sokol

He said the procedure might also alter good memories and warned against an “accelerated Alzheimer’s” approach.
In the study, the researchers artificially created a fearful memory by associating pictures of spiders with a mild electric shock delivered to the wrists of the volunteers.

A day later the volunteers were split into two groups – one was given the beta blocker propranolol and the other a dummy drug before both were shown the same pictures again.

The researchers assessed how fearful of the pictures the volunteers were by playing sudden noises and measuring how strongly they blinked, something called the “startle response”.
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(Submitted by a reader)

By B. R. Gowani

Financial insecurity has become an integral part of modern life. Capitalism, however, has exacerbated the insecurity. The recent continuing barrage of failures and bankruptcies of big financial houses, banks, and corporations in the US with their reverbeting global consequences, have raised the insecurity to an unprecedented level.

In trying times such as these, the demand for God and it’s accompanying offers of prayers increases like the bull market. Most people who are religious are also practical and therefore know who to pray to, but also whom to expect to fulfill their need, i.e., they know the difference between God and the US President. These people (all over the world) pray to God but they look to the US President to fulfill their needs, or at the very least, not create more needs by unleashing his fury at them in the form of wars, embargos, etc.

John F. Kennedy’s victory against the Republican Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 election, combined with his youthful ideals and his outstanding oratory performance, raised much hope in people around the world. However, it was no where near the hysteria the Barack Obama victory has created among the people of the world.

This is so for a number of reasons. At that time, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had the world divided between these two camps. Also, Kennedy was a white man and the memories of the atrocities by European colonialists in the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa were still fresh in the minds of many people. Finally, we cannot forget the resentment aroused in 1823 when President James Munroe’s famous Monroe Doctrine declared Latin America to be a part of the US sphere of influence.

The hysteria over the Obama victory had many reasons, too. One celebratory reason was the elation of dubya leaving; another, for the first time since Columbus, a black man has the opportunity to a seat that has always been a white man’s privilege. Also, in this country the history of lynching and slavery makes this a particularly poignant victory. Also, the widespread humiliation and loss of life in Iraq among the innocents was widely observed helplessly by the world, but now there is a flicker of hope that the atrocities and the occupation will be over, and Iraqis will be treated humanely. Although no one expects it’s plundered fortunes to be returned any time soon. The reality may or may not pen out but the world holds on to the audacity of hope and the message of change so effectively articulated during his campaign.

Ultimately though, it is the people who must find their own solutions to problems; which means they have to do things not only for themselves, but also for their countries — i.e., the ruling class. This was amply clear from Kennedy’s inaugural address: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” On the very first day Kennedy put people on the reality track.

At his inauguration, Obama used the same beautiful baloney to prepare the people to lower their expectations — and ultimately forget — any kind of meaningful help for their woes: “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”

The key [unspoken] word is sacrifice that the leaders ask of the people. The problem in 2009, however, is that most people have nothing left to sacrifice. But companies like Bank of America have done the deed for them, as in their mood for giving, they have sacrificed public money given to them by the government as bailout money at super bowl parties, lavish vacations, etc. (See the video following this article.)

As Michael Hudson points out the banks who are the major beneficiaries of the bailout money, are holding the economy hostage: “Give us what we want or we’ll plunge the economy into financial crisis.” Washington has given them nine trillion dollars (9,000,000,000,000) so far, with promises of another $2 trillion – and counting.” (See Dr. Hudson’s article following the Bank of America video)

As many knowledgeable people have pointed out, Obama has recruited the same people to run his government who have been responsible for creating this corrupt system in the first place. If Obama is genuinely interested in diminishing the mess the economy is in and the suffering people are experiencing, he should consider doing the following:

• Stop giving any more money to the banks and other corporations and instead ask those big shots who have made millions of dollars in wages and bonuses to return that money. Richard Fuld of the Lehman Brothers made 480 million dollars in eight years (equivalent to winning $ 60 million lottery every year for the last eight years.) The money from people like Fuld should be used to create jobs for the people who have been fired by Fuld and his kind.
• Impose a Patriot Tax on all those people having wealth of over a million dollars, at an increasing rate. Bill Gates would thus pay the highest tax. Bill Gates and others should pay this tax out of patriotism because the money would be spent for the benefit of fellow compatriots who have been pushed into the present miserable condition because of this failed capitalist system.

If this advice is not taken and people’s woes are not addressed, after four or eight years Obama will leave the US in very dire conditions. He, himself, will not be in good shape, either. Newly elected US presidents enter the White House with the support of the two crutches: Israel Lobby and the big corporations; but the observations show that they leave the White House with plenty of gray hair, having aged prematurely. Obama may have to leave in a wheelchair, given the problems he faces and will face during his term. Also, the inevitable fallout from the sense of let down after the euphoric expectations from within and without the US as they gradually realize that Obama will not create the magic they were hoping. They can already see that he is not on the Hope/Change path but has begun on the track of Mission Disappointments.

The wake up call for Pakistan has come early. Last Saturday, 30 people died in Pakistan in an attack by the CIA operated drone (unmanned plane). The California senator from Obama’s party, the chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, disclosed at a hearing: “As I understand it, these [drones] are flown out of a Pakistani base.” In other words, from the Pakistani soil, the US planes operate and kill many innocent Pakistanis. More of the same.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com