And the problem of living as an Indian in America
I was very curious to see what ‘The White Tiger’, an adaption of the 2008 Man Booker prize book with the same name was about. After watching the first five minutes, I decided I could not go ahead with it and decided to turn the TV off.
First off, I have to say I am a huge fan of Priyanka Chopra. She is an amazing actress, person, an over achiever in every sense of the word and someone who still carries an ambition that has no limits. The title of her upcoming book ‘Unfinished’ summarizes this perfectly; I eagerly await my pre-ordered copy. The way she has embraced her Indian heritage while carrying herself with grace in Hollywood, is something that makes me feel proud. I truly look up to her. However, this is the one occasion where I think she could have done better — by choosing to not do this movie.
The book, ‘The White Tiger’ (by Aravind Adiga) came out in 2008, the same year Slumdog Millionaire rocked the movie world. In many ways my complaints from both movies are the same. While the White Tiger is written by Aravind Adiga — an Indian author — it is primarily written for the western reader. Even in the movie, in the opening scene when the protagonist talks about Hinduism having 36 million gods, it feels like fact dropping for the western viewer. He talks about his background from poverty. And then there is the scene with the protagonist driving in a street with a cow in it. That was it for me.
You see I am a little exhausted of all the stereotypes that get beaten about India in the west, especially in America where I have been living for over four years now. To them India is still a country of extreme poverty. One of my friends once asked me if over 70% of India is poor (by the way the answer to that is a resounding no). The ignorance in America about India is blatant. What most people tend to know are the bad things. What is shocking is that this ignorance runs deep. Not just among the general population, but sometimes even the mainstream media does not know what they are talking about. In 2018, in the memory of India’s own Iron Man Sardar Vallabhai Patel, a giant statue — The Statue of Unity — the world’s largest one was built. Instead of commending the artwork or the scale of the project, I heard a news anchor from the US national TV news channel CBSN ask, ‘Where is India getting all this money from?’. Yes they spent a crazy amount of money for something symbolic, but are you telling me we do not have enough money to build a statue?
In almost all my time here, I have rarely encountered good news about India being reported. It is always some story about poverty, religion, caste etc., which is frankly quite exhausting. I have always wondered why this is the case. I have come to the conclusion that it has to do with what sells. They think no one wants to hear that India is one of the fastest developing economies, that it has arguably the fourth most powerful military in the world, digitization is on the rise, no they would rather talk about stories that have shock value because in the minds of the media, that is what people would rather watch.
Look, I get it. Is there poverty in India? Hell yeah, there are cases where there is extreme poverty. Is there financial disparity in India? Totally. Is caste system present? Sure. Can the treatment of women in India be horrible? Yes. Is there any part of the world where this is not true? Are there cows on the street? On some of them, sure (not a daily occurrence!).
I am not going to deny that problems exist or claim that India is the best country in the world. But none of these are as bad as they are perceived. It is certainly not universally true in India, and this is certainly not all that India is about.
Poverty exists and as far as pure numbers there are a lot of poor people, but as a percentage of the entire population it is nowhere close to as high as you would imagine (the exact number varies depending on where you choose to draw the poverty line but at worst it is as high as 26% according to one study).
What people should know is that despite the caste and religious differences, people in India are quite warm to each other and get along quite well for the most part. This is a movie crazy country where Hinduism is the majority religion, yet Muslim movie stars dominate the film industry and are revered (Shahrukh Khan is my idol). Women are respected and looked up to for the most part (In Hinduism, there are female goddesses). We have had a woman Prime Minister ages ago, even in our relatively short history of independence. Our military and space program are the strongest in the world, and the quality of engineers, doctors and now even entrepreneurs are world-class. The rise in digitization is astounding. Last I visited a street coconut seller said that he accepted payments via a cash app. For comparison, a lot of street food sellers in NYC still accept only cash.
The timing of this movie comes a couple years after the Oscar winning ‘Parasite’ (which had a similar backdrop of poverty and financial disparity and also takes a dark turn later on) and is not lost on me. I think this movie is a good awards-bait and maybe it will win awards and maybe it does deserve them for the effort that the cast put in.
What movies like Slumdog Millionaire and The White Tiger do is to romanticize poverty and beat the same stereotypes over and over again. I am not saying these are bad stories in themselves or that they are untrue or that they should not be told. All I am saying is that what ends up happening is that these become the only window and lens into Indian culture for someone who is not well versed with it. Movies like these are not reflective of the Indian culture (or even Bollywood for that matter). If people the world over had a better sense of the Indian culture and many more reference points and there were more stories about the good that there is then I would actually be okay with these movies. But unfortunately, that is not the case and that is why this is highly problematic.
