Parts of India are burning with anger, and with actual fires set by the burning effigies of Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle. Slumdog premiered in India last week, and went country-wide this week. As more Indians see the film or hear about it, the anger and the protests grow.

The target of all of this demonstration seems to be both the use of the word “dog” to describe the Indian slum-dwellers in the film, and the way the Indian slums are portrayed in the film. Indian activists have lodged formal human rights complaints in the courts to stop theatres showing the film.

Armed guards have been deployed outside cinemas in the east of India after protests against the title of the Oscar-nominated British film Slumdog Millionaire threatened to turn violent.

The protesters, who have threatened to burn effigies of the film’s British director, Danny Boyle, and others associated with the film, claim the use of the word “dog” is humiliating to slum dwellers.

In Patna, the capital of the eastern state of Bihar, posters for the movie have been torn down while hundreds of people demonstrated outside cinemas showing the film, which opened in India last Friday.

Police have been ordered to guard cinemas in the city after protesters said they would continue to demonstrate until the title is change.

“Referring to people living in slums as dogs is a violation of human rights,” said the leader of the protests, Tateshwar Vishwakarma, who is the general secretary of a slum dwellers rights group. “We will burn Danny Boyle’s effigies in 56 slums here,” he told the Indo-Asian News Service. Vishwakarma, has filed a complaint against the film, which will be heard in a Patna court on February 5.

Another demonstrator, Kishori Das, claimed protests could spread across the country: “We are in touch with like-minded organisations across India.”

More than 20 slum dwellers mounted a protest last week in Mumbai, where the rags-to-riches film is set. They chanted slogans outside the home of the one of the film’s actors, Anil Kapoor.

“I am poor, but don’t call me slumdog,” said one of the protesters, 18-year-old Rekha Dhamji.

Today a Mumbai magistrate ordered a police investigation into a separate complaint that the film promotes hatred of slum dwellers. The complaint by the social activist Nicholas Almeida, said it was “defamatory” and “completely against society”.

It accused the film of “creating hatred against poor slum dwellers in the minds of established and capitalist people.” It also said the word “dog” should be removed from the title.

A magistrate issued notices to Boyle and the film’s producer, Christian Colson, and the distributors, Warner Brothers, informing them of the police investigation. It will try to establish whether the film “hurts the sentiments of slum-dwellers”, according to the Press Trust of India.

The film has been a surprise hit across the world, and won the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild, and four categories at the Golden Globes. It has also received 10 Oscar nominations. It tells the story of Jamal Malik, an orphaned teenager who wins the Indian version of the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It has charmed both audiences and critics, but some have accused it of indulging in “poverty porn” by dwelling on squalor in India’s slum areas.

The screenplay writer, Simon Beaufoy, said people should not read too much into the title. “I just made up the word. I liked the idea. I didn’t mean to offend anyone,” he said.
Kapoor dismissed protests about the title and said the film itself presented a positive portrayal of India and its people. Children from the slums are actually called much worse names,” he said. “It’s a feel-good film, a film of hope.”

From The Guardian

Though I think the Indian activists are going overboard, they do have a point, one that is not lost on Western film critics and journalists. Today, Reuters has a story debating whether or not Slumdog Millionaire is “poverty porn”, (their words, not ours) basically asking the question of whether Western audiences embrace films like Slumdog (or, to take another example, The Constant Gardener) because poverty is romanticized and “pretty” on the screen.

The producers of Slumdog might want to think about pulling the film, or considering a one-country specific name-change. Something tells me these protests will only get worse. On the bright side, however, the film might have instigated a national conversation in India about the state of their slums and the treatment of India’s underclass.