Secular Dogs are usually Millionaires

Since secular people set the rules and we follow them diligently, it appears to be okay to dish out sanctimony before even watching the movie. 

Once upon a time, people used to be squeamish about how children are depicted in movies. Fast forward to the age of liberal activism, people are taking all sorts of liberties; with Europe taking the lead, almost nothing is off limits. 

Danny Boyle is most famous for his movie Trainspotting. This is one of the movies you must love if you want to sound cool. Essentially this movie is about a bunch of drug addicted losers. This movie celebrates loserdom. Also, the lead character is in a relationship with a 14-year old girl, though mature for her age and arguably much more mature than the lead loser who she takes a fancy to. Arguably the movie wouldn't be quite as popular if that pedo-bait was removed.

Some people have taken umbrage at the unabashedly anti-Hindu tone of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, but we will ignore that - we accept it as a fact of life. But don't tell us that exploitative portrayal of children is the only way to depict real poverty. That would be a serious insult to people with imagination. Also, did anybody find the "dog" part unacceptable? People from the real slums did.

Seculars did not find all these things objectionable. This movie is just one more vehicle to keep the cash registers ringing. Poke any secular hard enough and you are liable to find a stash hidden somewhere underneath. But it takes some gall to claim that people hate this movie because it exposes India's dirty underbelly.

For one thing, they ran the country all this while and still running it. For some reason, pushing hundreds of millions of people into abject poverty and keeping them there is a cause for celebration.

But poverty wasn't always so sexy. There was a time when we were not allowed to wonder why our country remains so poor. They wanted India to live in villages and slums and stay there. If only they had Danny Boyle then! Things started changing rapidly after a certain set of communals started winning elections. Gee, we wouldn't know there was poverty in India if Danny Boyle hadn't made this movie! We wouldn't even know there were slums!

So we had 60 years of bad monsoon and various other misfortunes. India will not become a superpower so we should not even try. We must celebrate poverty and not doing so is a sign of denial and fundamentalist streak. But all the schemes are working fine, just like they did during the Nehruvian golden age. 

As long as the communals remain at bay and the secular dogs get a few bones thrown in, everything is fine.