Of Slumdogs, Doxosophers, and the (In)dignity of Labour(ers) 1

Studies in South Asian Film and Media, May 2014

Winner of eight Academy Awards and seven BAFTA Awards among many others, Danny Boyle’s 2008 film, Slumdog Millionaire (hereafter, SDM) has been among the most successful – and controversial – films of the last few years. The question of why SDM – described by film critic Robert Koehler as “a really, really minor movie with really, really big problems” (158) –merits an entire volume of critical essays is addressed by the book’s title, which indicates an engagement with the phenomenon of SDM, i.e. with the extra-textual proliferations of this film text. As a phenomenon and a cultural event, SDM provoked intense discussions about cinematic representations of poverty, about who can represent whom and how, about realist versus melodramatic narrative modes, and about the politics of transnational cultural production. Indeed, the intertextual matrix of the film text, its reception, the awards it won, the publicized afterlives of the slum-dwelling child actors, the increased demand for slum tours by foreign tourists, the daily playing of the song Jai Ho at the India-Pakistan border at Wagah, and its adoption as the official campaign song of the Indian National Congress in the 2009 general elections points to various sites of engagement, affiliation, and contestation with respect to SDM. The Slumdog Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology is divided into four sections that present different ways of framing SDM ...

The Slumdog Phenomenon, ed. Ajay Gehlawat, 2013

This chapter examines the ontological conditions of urban life in postcolonial India. By looking at some of the post-millennial Indian novels in English, it attempts to theorize urbanism and its consequences for the poor and slum-dwellers. The chapter makes a claim that the story of modernity and the concomitant progress of humanity has also been a story of mass exclusion, a chasm in the social division, denial of human rights, and, hence, a crisis of our moral imagination. This stems from the fact that urban life is essentially consumerist and hence divisive in nature. The scale and degree of one's consumption, therefore, become qualifying parameters of who can find healthy breathing space in urban life. The chapter concludes by making a case for strong and engaging frameworks of social assets to ensure a democratic life in cities.

Journal of Architectural Education, 2010

Mumbai and other Indian cities are rapidly transforming to address the needs of global commerce and the expanding middle class. Mumbai’s vernacular environments, home to most working-class residents, are consequently being redeveloped using supermodern global aesthetics. The urbanism emerging from the current wave of modernism is an unprecedented radical departure from existing patterns of place. Proponents claim the new developments serve low-income residents’ interests, when actually they ignore fundamental socio-cultural and economic realities. This paper considers two case studies, Dharavi and Girangaon, highlighting a subset of Mumbai’s vernacular environments to argue for their significance and to explore alternative redevelopment approaches.

Public Culture, 2013

2012

How do the poor see themselves? In their daily struggles, how do they use crea ve imaginings to withstand various stresses and their seemingly never-ending eff ort at subsistence? In this paper, Veena Das explores the many revealed ways the poor exercise crea vity, boldness and enterprise in their a empts to cope and transcend, even for brief moments, daun ng states of depriva on and the des tute roles that both experts and society seemed to have consigned them to. In this lecture, delivered as part of York University's 50th anniversary celebra on, Dr. Das shares with her audience insights from her ongoing mul-year research on the residents of New Delhi slums including the not o en assumed ability of the poor to think, feel and act in ways that are all-too-humanboth spontaneous and ra onal.

2009