Mumbai in Slumdog Millionaire: Ethnicized or Globalized? SA NA E L G A M A L
Danny Boyle’s acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire, set in one of the slums in Mumbai, India, narrates the life of Jamal, an uneducated orphan who, despite all odds, emerges from the slum and wins 20 million rupees in the famous Indian television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Through a series of gripping flashbacks, the film not only explains how Jamal knew the answers, but also serves as a lens to inspect the cultural foundation and urban landscape of Mumbai. The concept of globalization, commonly defined as the process entailing the interconnectedness between nations and the spread of practices and people between countries, is vividly integrated in the film. Globalization is portrayed as an indispensable aspect of Mumbai’s transformation, with numerous scenes serving to point to its significance in shaping new Mumbai. However, an anti-Muslim riot scene, which shows Hindu nationalists fiercely attacking a Muslim community in the slum, depicts violence stemming from religious unrest in globalized Mumbai. The scene showcases the puzzling, contradictory, and dual nature of Mumbai’s transformation – the growing ethnic discrimination and religious intolerance, and the simultaneous transformation from just another one of India’s cities, to India’s promising candidate for global city status. The riot scene in the film adds another layer of complexity to the projected image of Mumbai as a city. Taken together, this scene and the film as a whole articulate the contradiction that communicates a cracked and refracted image of globalization, dismissing the simplistic onesided image of development that is often associated with globalization, and replacing it with one that has greater multifacetedness and complexity. The anti-Muslim riot scene is the predominant optic through which the phenomenon of ethnic violence can be thoroughly investigated. It begins as an idyllic, laughter-filled scene, with Muslim mothers washing clothes as they watch their children play in the water. This peaceful setting sharply contrasts what follows, where a group of rod-carrying Hindu rioters sprints in
MUMBAI IN SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: ETHNICIZED OR GLOBALIZED?
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