Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire has garnered a lot of critical praise, and made not a few year-end “best-of” lists. The film combines gritty realism with whimsical hope as it follows the plight of an 18-year-old Indian orphan named Jamal who’s spent his life in abject poverty, scavenging on the streets of Mumbai, experiencing the worst of the Hindi slums. Jamal inexplicably becomes a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and, to the dismay of authorities, reaches the final question round and becomes a folk hero.
As we follow the plight of the protagonist in Slumdog Millionaire, we get the sense that something very different than Hinduism, the primary religion of India, is at work. Apparently, this was intentional by the book’s author, Vikas Swarup. In an interview with The Hindu, Swarup says,
“I wanted my protagonist to represent each and every street kid in India. Hence I gave him this all encompassing name. Ram Mohammad Thomas, in a sense, transcends religion and caste – he is an everyman, an embodiment of the microcosm of India,” the author says.
The book had also set itself apart by refraining from using themes like Karma in it’s narrative, which are a constant fixation in many books by Indian authors.
“My hero is an eighteen year old waiter living in Asias biggest slum in Dharavi. His life perforce had to pass through the bars and ‘chawls’ of India. He would be working as a servant here, a waiter there. Hence there was no scope for any karma-dharma exotica.” (emphasis mine) Read More
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