Anything Indian works for us??

The recent melodrama after the success of Slumdog Millionaire forced me to ask this question to myself. What was so "Indiansih" about the movie that it won so many accolades in India before and after winning eight Oscars. It was not for the first time that A R Rahaman took an international project. If we forget A R Rahaman and Gulzar and the small role that Anil Kapoor played in the movie, there wasn't any other contribution made by an Indian in this movie. All the crew members in the movie were non Indian. So then, why such a big fuss? It won Oscars just like any other good movie would have done. Definitely Slumdog is not an exception, when Hollywood went offshore to pick up a theme. I can say this with much conviction because I have watched the movies Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland.


Indians love hero worship. From Team India players to Bollywood stars to politicians, we are known to put heroes up there. And in a country of a billion-plus, what does one do when one falls short of heroes? Do we outsource them or appropriate anybody remotely Indian? The celebration in India over Bobby Jindal’s elevation as Louisiana Governor proves again that whenever, anywhere, round the globe, we smell Indian we begin following the trails like sniff dogs. Even as his village and the rest of India broke into a jig over his political ascent in the US, very few realized that here was a man who had never even visited India. Mother Teresa born in Macedonia, distressed with the poverty stricken India, claimed us as her (too big!!) foster child. We claimed her as our own and one may argue, that she, too, had lovingly claimed us as her own. Then V S Naipaul created waves in the literary circuit and we went all out to embrace him. When NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, born to an Indian father, went into space, we were one of the first to go to town about her victory leap. We prayed day and night for her safe return. Not that we did any wrong praying for her. But we prayed for her considering her an Indian. Tell me is she really more Indian than American?

Do we as Indians tend to borrow role models because we don’t have enough of our own? Or are Bobby, Sunita, etc really our heroes and we are just doing what suits us best - hero worship?