Some add that the criticism of "Slumdog" may be less about getting it wrong than its focus on issues some in India would rather downplay.
The world's second-most populous country after China has seen enormous benefits from globalization. But "Slumdog" raises questions about the price paid by those left behind and the cost in eroding morality, seen in the portrayal of Salim, Jamal's gangster-in-training brother. For India, this hits a nerve, after a top Indian IT outsourcing firm, Satyam, reported this month that it had faked profits.
"A lot of people felt it was bashing India, but I disagree," said Rochona Majumdar, an Indian film expert at the University of Chicago. "We're too quick to celebrate 'Incredible India,' she said, referring to an Indian tourism slogan. "But there is an underbelly. To say we don't have problems is absurd."
Salman Ali, 12, lives those problems. He's been on his own as long as he can remember, he said. Dressed in a ragged T-shirt, filthy pants and bare feet, he sleeps under Mumbai's Mahim pipeline, a local landmark featured in "Slumdog" amid the Technicolor water, toxic electronic waste and petroleum sludge. He earns a few dollars a week recycling garbage or begging on the nearby overpass.
Sometimes police beat him up, he said. And several times gangs have attacked him and stolen what little he has. Sure, he'd love to appear on a game show like Jamal did in the film and become a millionaire.
But however hard he tries to make money, Salman said, he never gets ahead. His dream is to become a Bollywood star one day. And whenever a film crew shows up to shoot amid the squalor, he tries to get their attention. But he said they never pick him. "Who wouldn't want to be a millionaire?" he said.
A few miles away, in the maze of alleys that make up Dharavi, Asia's largest slum and another backdrop for the film, some said the plot sounded too close to real life and therefore not interesting, whereas others said they wanted to see how it depicted their neighborhood.
Homemaker Lakshmi Nagaraj Iyer, 26, said she had trouble with the get-rich-quick premise. "I feel it's a wrong route," she declared. "We barely get by, but the answer is education and hard work, not a quick fix."
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mark.magnier@latimes.com
Pavitra Ramaswamy in The Times' New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.
