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By Joseph D’souza
THE MOVIE Slumdog
Millionaire and the Booker Prize winning novel White Tiger have highlighted
the non-shiny part of India.
Far from exploiting poverty, these are stories about
India which demand a global response – especially for the sake of the
children.
Indian outcastes
This is the India of 80 percent of the population
– the India of the slums, the outcastes, the exploited, and of abject
poverty.
The India where Dalit, tribal and poor children are
sold into the sex trade. Where fully healthy children are maimed into
becoming beggars. Where children become victims of religious communalism.
And where the elitist classes keep them out of prosperity and development,
by not being willing to change a system that disenfranchises the children
of the downtrodden.
I have worked with the disenfranchised and marginalized
for most of my life. I’m a citizen of India who is proud of my
country’s progress in recent years, yet I must point out the obvious
again.
‘Poverty porn’
Slumdog Millionaire is not
about selling the poverty of India, as a British newspaper alleged
(‘Shocked by Slumdog’s poverty porn,’ Alice Miles, The Times, January 14).
Instead, it is a story about the real India of the
majority, where children become the primary victims of all that is
dysfunctional in society (as The Guardian pointed out).
As the movie is released across India, expect another
barrage of attacks by a section of the elitist Indian media. Likely there
will be heavy emphasis on the simple fact that this is a movie made by a
white Brit!
Fantasized Bollywood
Such critiques forget that this movie – which was
won a number of Golden Globes and Oscars – is far truer to Indian
reality than the popular fantasized Bollywood movies.
But isn’t this the time for truth-telling about
what ails India and our world?
Are not the children of our day the primary victims of
caste and racial discrimination, human trafficking, war, poverty and
religious extremism?
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The world has some 1.2 billion children – with
India and China accounting for more than a fourth: 400 million children.
The vast majority of India’s roughly 250 million
children are affected by dire poverty, caste discrimination and
exploitation.
Slumdog children
Millions of children living in Africa, Latin America
and the Muslim world suffer the same plight. Many of these are in similarly
desperate situations.
Is it crystal clear to you, as it is to me? The slumdog
of our generation is the boy or girl less than 14 years old.
I have a sobering, reoccurring thought these days. Is
the main sin of our generation what we are doing to children – both
born and unborn? What is our part in changing the conditions of the slumdog
kids of the world?
Joseph D’souza is head of the Dalit Freedom
Network. He was a keynote speaker at Missions Fest 2009 in Vancouver.
March 2009
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