Is Slumdog Millionaire Only a Western Representation of the Underbelly of Indian Society?

This paper attempts to study how the movie Slumdog Millionaire explores the different levels of marginalization of the street and/or slum children arising from a very intricately complex intersection of their age, gender, and sexuality. The basic proposition here is that the movie is not just a ‘poverty porn’ perpetuating western hegemonies upon India as the veteran Bollywood star Mr. Amitabh Bachchan claimed. Rather the representation of the predicament of the street children from the slum of Dharavi in Mumbai as shown here in the movie is quite critical keeping in mind the myriad perspectives upon the lives of such a heterogeneous community called slum children. So, this study draws heavily from the theories of Subaltern Studies with a view to foregrounding the following four factors that are central to the bad conditions of living for the slum or street children everywhere: 1) The marginalization of street/slum children in terms of their economic, political and physical subjugation, 2) Their unassuming ‘quiet encroachment’ in the form of illegal and criminal activities, 3) Prevailing dominant perception of the world about such street/slum children that ignores the qualitative differences in the potentiality of these subalterns, and 4) The question of solidarity amongst such a heterogeneous subaltern class.