Jeremy Seabrook: Slumdog MIllionaire's two-dimensional characters betray India's poor

The initial outcry in India against Slumdog Millionaire was about the "image" of India that the film projects to the world. Given the universally admired economic performance, the transformation of the public face of India, the rise of a high-spending conspicuously consuming middle class – does a film like this show the other side, the ugly underbelly of India? Does it constitute a betrayal of the carefully constructed work of modernisation and wealth creation that official India has been at pains to craft for the world? These criticisms are ultimately trivial; and the emphasis of the criticism has now changed. The real charge is the cruel calumny and defamation of the living flesh and blood of the slums of Mumbai and other Indian cities, people who lead lives of quiet heroism, uncelebrated in this film, just as they are in the media in general. It offers a crude and reductive account of the lives of poor people, the vast majority of whom labour honestly, often for pitiful returns, to bring up their children with decency and a humanity that ought to be an object of admiration to those rendered callous by affluence. Of course misery and exploitation also exist in the slums, but these are more than matched by the hardened hearts and indifference to suffering of the possessing classes. Part of the success of the film derives precisely from those whose prejudices are confirmed by every cliche about the slums, every hackneyed horror story with which the middle class regale each other, tales of the venality of servants, the viciousness of the poor and the violence of their lives, their conscienceless desire to steal from their employers, to snatch chains and murder elderly widows in their beds. There is no sense of the life of the slums. The disjointed episodes in the life of the hero are simply schematic rehearsals of every prejudice that ever emanated from the ill will of those who blame poor people for their own suffering – there are scenes in which children are blinded by goondas to make them more efficient beggars; children are trafficked into prostitution; communal riots arise out of nowhere; the violence of gangs is matched only by the corruption and cruelty of the police (a point that will have some resonance with a majority of slumdwellers). But for the most part, it is a reasonless detachment of spectacle from life; in that sense, it is probably closer to Bollywood than is generally admitted, but the sheer in-your-face two-dimensional portrayal of people without character, without antecedents, without origins is offensive. The great majority of people in Mumbai slums I have known for 20 years or more migrated reluctantly from their home village which, for one reason or another, could no longer supply them with a secure livelihood. While keeping alive a dream of home, they stay in places they have constructed themselves with their bare hands, on unsafe ground, dangerous hillsides, marshy swamps and arid expanses of land the ownership of which is often disputed, and from which they are liable to be evicted at any time without warning. Most must overcome terrible odds to create a humane life – women and girls waiting patiently for hours for clean water which comes in a trickle at unpredictable times, struggling to maintain the cramped hutment in neat order, placing the remainder of food in bags on nails in the wall so the rats cannot reach them. If you visit any slum in the grey humid dawn of Mumbai, you will see thousands of people walking, emerging from the squalor, models of cleanliness, dignity and self-respect, crowding the buses and trains, travelling long hours more to service their "betters" who are so ready to condemn them, as servants, cooks, drivers, security guards, vegetable and fruit vendors, small traders, cleaners, child-minders, nurses and dog-walkers. No one has provided either shelter or work for them. Both they have produced for themselves out of their own inventiveness and ingenuity. The faith that a majority of parents have in education is also deeply touching, the more since in government schools the problem is teachers who may or may not make an appearance before their pupils, and when they do, set them tasks of profoundly unimaginative and repetitive tedium, calculated not to awaken the curiosity of children but to put it sleep; so that a new generation is schooled to servitude. Yet the vibrancy and energy of children in the slum – and this is reflected in Slumdog – are immensely touching; but there is no trace here of their devotion to learning and self-improvement. This misjudgment of poor people is not just a question of image. The exaltation of the eponymous hero is greeted by the community as though it were their own triumph. The fact that "one of their own" has become rich elicits a vicarious outburst of joy, and here we are at the heart of the ideology that teaches that it can happen to anyone. Anybody can rise out of the misery that is slum life; but it is only by chance that the boy knows the answers to the questions. There is no sense of the years of endurance of women, the stoicism of working men, the labour of children that goes into the success of the hero: he is plucked arbitrarily out of the masses as a symbol. It is a celebration of the culture of the dice, the casino, the lucky ticket, chance. There have been thoughtful and beautiful films about the poor of Mumbai – Anand Patwardhan's Mumbai Hamara Shaher and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay; but they didn't get the big-time treatment or the adulation heaped on Boyle. But then, they were only working with the reality of people they depicted with such loving attention. One can only wonder at the social, economic and artistic fantasy in which we are living, if Slumdog Millionaire passes for gritty realism; and what kind of awakening lies in wait for those who collude with these delusions.