The strangest cinematic backlash that the legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan ever touched off, when he slammed Slumdog Millionaire, was probably the sharpest denunciation in subtlest terms, in recent times, of the western prejudice against Asian film makers and film making. The backlash to the backlash that was later generated by a few vested interests will just add to the glory of the Oscars.

The whole nation went into a festive mode as India had a field day at the Oscar night in Los Angeles. As the day broke, the media went crazy filling up tons of pages with those cliché pictures and mindlessly showering accolades on the stars of the night for receiving honors that were wittingly denied to us for a long time, though we had deserved them far better than many others did earlier.

The gala event belonged to a movie named Slumdog Millionaire, SM for short, that had been shot in the dingy labyrinths of Mumbai’s infamous slums. Danny Boyle, the director, deserves a pat for choosing a city that paradoxically represents India as an emerging superpower while being home to the biggest slum of Asia. The movie swept as many as eight Oscars in various categories.

As the fever of celebration was at its peak, questions that surreptitiously dogged all of us were- Have we really arrived at the world stage?  Has the western world woke up from slumber and is it ready to sit and take notice of pure Indian talent?………or are we just playing to the quirky whims of west’s cinematic apartheid?   How many times have we heard India’s name at the Oscars? Well, there was Bhanu Athaiya’s costume design award in 1982, for Richard Attenborough’s biopic Gandhi. Then we had some easily forgotten names, like Apurva Shah and Umesh Shukla, who had worked on Ratatouille and Titanic which went on to win the Oscar, all of the three films had a western name attached to their making.

Like all good Indian horoscopes, let us start with ancestor of Slumdog Millionaire made by a person of Indian origin. It was Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay, which rightfully deserved the elusive award. ‘Mother India’ a cult movie by the great Mehboob Khan could only make it to the nominations. Lagaan was another flick to meet the same fate. Stalwart of Indian cinema Satyajit Ray, who famously accused of ‘exporting poverty’ too paled beyond the arc lights of Oscars, all that he could extract was a Lifetime Achievement Award just a few weeks before he died.       

Every year, movies were sent from India for the best foreign film category, and only thrice since 1979 – Mother India, Salaam Bombay and Lagaan were Indian films nominated. Uncannily, no true blue Indian movie had made it great at the Oscars.

A. R. Rehman, the great music maestro who had given original score for Lagaan which was as scintillating as SM and he had even sung one to two songs for the movie, but he could not even bag a nomination. 

Cinema is a medium of showcasing cultures, and a culture is a compendium of history, traditions, peoples’ experiences derived from ageless rituals, its reality or its surreal composition should not be a matter of debate of its approval or disapproval left to the prerogative of a singular judging entity. The wisdom that guides the selection process must rise above petty regional considerations, the confines of bottled idiosyncrasy and false racial superiority. 
 
As for the movie basking in the sunshine of success, let it be made clear that Slumdog is not without its share of flaws. Some outlandish sequences in the movie point us to its real nature- an exaggerated melodrama. By picking on poverty and then privileging form over function, Slumdog almost begs to be debated; however, on flip side, the film’s sheer sense of energy, eye for detail and humanist core camouflage the shortcomings.

Does this lead us to understand that some of our best movies fall short of western cinematic standards? Are Oscar judges rightly knowledgeable of the great Indian culture and her ethos?

Slumdog’s success must not be just viewed as a dream coming true but more as a case study or a debate to evaluate the credibility of westerners’ judging wisdom.

India is nation of great films and great filmmakers and their cinematic excellence far outshines the aura and awe that the Oscars inspire.