Tarun J Tejpal - The Missionary Position
                      The Missionary 
Position
Tarun J Tejpal - We all love sentimental trash, especially if it can masquerade as 
something artistic and meaningful. Often it needn't even do that — in an act of self-
affirmation we invest it with these virtues. Slumdog Millionaire is one more 
representation of India as the white man sees it, not as we do. It's a five-hundred-
year old tradition. Look carefully, the triumphant picture in the papers could be the 
enlightened missionary with the tribal boys. 
The tradition is strong: we've always been cosy with the representations. It's 
worthwhile to remember we did not tell an Indian story and force the world to 
recognise it. They told us an Indian story and forced us to applaud it.
A bit like Thomas Babington Macaulay, who declared from behind the musketry of the 
colonial conqueror that a "single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole 
native literature of India and Arabia". Looking up a long barrel with gunpowder at its 
end, we quietly acquiesced. 
Quietly turned our backs on hundreds of classical and medieval texts, including the 
great epics, the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads, the medical, ethical, linguistic, 
erotic and political treatises of dozens of pathbreaking thinkers, the plays of Kalidasa, 
the deeply humanist and philosophic poetry of the sufi and bhakti singers, and the 
luminous memoirs of emperors and commoners. And having acquiesced in our 
classification by another — ill-informed at that — proceeded to spend the next nearly 
two hundred years hunting for approval.
The argument does not proceed from narrowness, from a bristling us and them. Artistic 
domain, and license, is boundless — even if the art is only commerce. Everyone has 
the right to tell anyone's story, in whichever way they choose. But if the story is 
specious and yet is taken for a master tale, it's reason to wonder at the state of cultural 
discourse.
From a distance, through the refractions of many media lenses, I like Danny Boyle. He 
exudes great energy and humility. Qualities that make astonishing things possible, 
qualities that are on display in his rollercoaster film set in Mumbai, his Concorde ride to 
showbiz stardom. Yet, from a distance, through the rapturous din of critics and viewers, 
I wonder at the film. Setting aside AR Rahman's ever-enchanting music and the visceral 
brilliance of the little kids, I try and understand why a reasonably entertaining, mildly 
inconsistent, mildly incoherent, mildly sloppy in its casting, mildly sloppy on its facts film, 
with a banal narrative trajectory, and dodgy politics at its heart, becomes such a 
phenomenon.
One feels awe not for the film, but for its miraculous journey. Clearly, in an 
increasingly low-brow ocean of publicity and hype, the idea of true excellence is a 
drowned raft.
Not shorn of the hype, but because of it, to an Indian, the film ought to disappoint. It 
tells me nothing that I don't already know; and it tells me things I know to be not true. 
Unlike Amitabh Bachchan I have no problems with the film focusing on India's abject 
poverty. That focus is salutary, and crying out for further exploration. My problem is 
the opposite— that it trivialises it. Uses its excreta and chopped limbs to tell a 
dubious story that leaves the viewer not disturbed but cheerfully smug. You leave the 
seat exhilarated, not in pain.
The film tells a very big lie: that India's poor have a happy shot at leaping out of their 
misery into affluence and joy. One day you can be in the crap heap — diving into 
excreta — and the next running down a slum girl who may have failed to make school 
but seems to have managed to walk through Vogue's offices on her way to teenage. 
With a stunning lack of plausibility you see the slum child Jamaal grow into a refined 
public schoolboy who must surely be eating cucumber sandwiches for lunch. India's 
wannabe wealthy — billionaires among them — would slice their fingers to boast such 
a sophisticated son. For that accent alone, they would throw in their toes too.
As many cooing admirers have remarked, the director is on a lickety-split run, pacing 
his film like a Kobe Bryant fast-break in an NBA finals. Throw, catch, feint, weave, leap, 
dunk; turn and start running again. Aw! Gee! The camera is shaking, the story is 
sprinting — there is no way anyone can tell if a few chapters have fallen out, several 
links of logic lost. 
You have to be grateful Jamal only grows up to be Dev Patel. Given the absence of 
any need to explain the miraculous transformation, he could well have become Brad 
Pitt or Prince Charles. To further celebrate the carnival of implausibility, Master Dev 
acts with the cool flatness of the cucumber sandwich (that he surely must be eating) 
— no neuroses of the slums tarnishing his soul.
For those celebrating the authenticity of the film, here's a secret: the makers clearly 
had no interest in verisimilitude. It's been the rough approach of artists working the 
India material for the last hundred years. It arises from a clear understanding of 
"audience". The awgee mobs filling theatres around the world, and paying in dollars or 
some such muscular currency, cannot tell the difference between Hindi and Hindu or 
the vast distance between Mumbai and Agra. Much like the American tourists at the 
Taj Mahal, who cannot distinguish between an unlettered, ignorant urchin and a 
licensed guide.
The awgee mobs — which include vast swathes of awgee India — will not be held 
back by the remarkable metamorphosis of Hindi-speaking slum children into English-
speaking teenagers — smoothly accomplished whilst riding the roofs of trains, without 
the intervention of any forms of schooling. Nor will they wonder by what divine principle 
some of the desperately destitute speak Hindi and others English.
In the happy world of air-conditioning and popcorn — and fountain Pepsi — the poor 
can be made to do whatever we wish. Dance, sing, love, win quiz contests, murder 
with a Webley & Scott, die in a tub full of currency notes. What is the meaning of being 
rich if you cannot make the poor do whatever you wish? What is the meaning of being 
Hollywood if you cannot make India whatever you wish?
Aptly then, the awgee army will not be detained by the representation of the police 
either. It knows Mumbai's police have vanquished murder, rape, riot, theft and arson.
All its working on now is nabbing crooked quiz contestants and torturing them 
through the night with electrical shocks to evoke the correct answer. If the art 
direction is right — squalid files and furniture — and the cop is fat enough, there is 
no reason for further doubt. It also knows behind the fatness and toughness the 
police hide the soul of Mother Teresa. Once the boy who eats cool cucumber 
sandwiches begins to talk, his heart will melt, and the empathy flows like faeces in 
the slums.
THE AWGEE sociologists also know that the grand hosts of India's grandest shows 
all come from the slums. Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan — the only two 
who've ever hosted the Hindi version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? And, of 
course, now Anil Kapoor in this fast-break film — who chooses to host it in English, 
because the slum boy has lost his Hindi as he grew up (just as Kapoor himself did — 
the upward mobility from the slums is a veritable avalanche!).
Awgee and awgee also know that these grand hosts play sinister games, like planting 
wrong answers and summarily handing over contestants to the fat and tough police (for 
electrocution and empathy).
The media tells us the film is about hope. And hope, as we all know, is greater than 
inconsistency, inaccuracy, implausibility, dodgy politics, and party pooper critics. And 
since the film is about the triumph of impossible hope, it is impossibly greater than all of 
the above. QED. And yes, of course it is also a fantasy, a fairytale. And since, for these 
poor sods, hope too is a fantasy, it all coheres, hangs together beautifully.
The awgee readers of awgee media know that this is the crucial difference between 
people like Satyajit Ray, Mira Nair and the Slumdog millionaires. Their films were about 
poverty and street children; this one's about fantastic hope. In their heart of hearts, the 
awgee readers know the poor are desperately in need of hope. 
They also know that hope is all they can — and will — give them. And let's be honest — 
false or true, fantastic hope is still hope. The media knows something even more 
fundamental. Never criticise the celebrity whose interview keeps your shop alive. The 
road to poverty is paved with robust criticism.
The world of entertainment is studded with shining pyramids of implausibility. Each 
one's true reward is a singing cash register. But great awards, fools argue, must go to 
the fragile hutments of truth and excellence. The wise, on the other hand, know the 
wages at the Oscars better. They know they have a rare gift (as in the film) for turning 
ordinary shit into tasty chocolate and peanut butter.
It's Written by Tarun J Tejpal. Some rides are so giddy you can't see the truth, says 
Tarun J Tejpal. According to Tarun Tejpal “sorrow must not be cultivated: it is a 
poor lifestyle choice.” Tarun Tejpal is a journalist, publisher, and novelist. In a 26-
year career, Tarun Tejpal has been an editor with the India Today and the Indian 
Express groups, and the managing editor of Outlook, India’s premier 
newsmagazine. In March 2000, he started Tehelka, a news organisation that has 
earned a global reputation for its aggressive public interest journalism. Also you can 
check Tarun J Tejpal.