India Wins the Oscars – Slumdog Millionaire

India recently won the Oscars read most of the headlines in all newspapers in the recent week. The title sounds confusing as there is no Oscar that is awarded to any nation. The Oscar award is presented only to things and persons connected to the film industry. The Oscar is recognized as the highest award that anybody or anything connected to movies and films can hope to get. Countries usually win awards at sports meets like the Olympics or any other competition held to evaluate the performance of nations at a world level. Then what is the reason behind such an inappropriate headline?

The reason is that the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was awarded a total of 8 Oscar awards during the Oscar presentation ceremony held recently. The Indian connection to the movie is the main protagonist in the movie is an Indian origin actor presently living in the U.K, majority of the cast are Indians, the music director is an Indian as also some technicians involved in the making of the film. The most important point is the theme of the movie is Indian. However, what makes the film Un- Indian is that the language is English and hence made primarily for the western audience and majority of the technical crew including the producers and the director were non-Indian westerners. Though the film flopped at the box offices in India, the hype and hoopla surrounding the movie itself is worth getting an Oscar.

Many argued that the film is an insult to India as it showed the filth and harsh realities of Indian slums thereby hiding the other aspect of present India, which is of a vibrant and shining India. Some argued that the film had technical flaws like the hero answering a question wrongly in the film; incidentally the film is based on a popular TV quiz show. All in all, the film many awards at the Oscars and now it seems that India Inc has decided to outsource films outside India to bag more awards at the Oscars in the future. At least now, we Indians can proudly call ourselves real outsources now as the film industry is starting reverse outsourcing. The only question to be asked is “Will any western film making companies want to take up Indian scripts”?