Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup - Essay Example

The Slumdog Millionaire is a novel that is extremely close to reality as it represents many aspects of the real Indian society with great resemblance and its realism outweighs its adventure story and fairytale elements. The Slumdog Millionaire is a novel written by Vikas Swarup which was first published in the year 2005. The novel revolves around the life of Ram Muhammad Thomas who is a waiter struck by poverty and working in Mumbai. He goes on to participate in a show known as Who Will Win a Billion. No one could have imagined that this poor waiter would actually be able to correctly answer all the questions on the show and become the rightful winner of the amount of one billion. Ram answers all the twelve questions and this comes as a surprise to the producers of the show as Ram comes from an uneducated and underprivileged class with no access to materials that could provide him with such skills to answer these knowledgeable questions. The producers of the show are shocked and they are unwilling to accept this surprise owing to the unavailability of money. They resort to wrong means and hand over Ram to the police claiming that he has cheated and won the show. A lawyer comes to the rescue of Ram and helps proving the fact that Ram had not opted for wrong means to win the show. It is to the lawyer that Ram narrates the story of his life and the happenings in the slums where he lived. He told her of how he gained the knowledge to answer the questions that were put up in the show (Swarup 2008). The author utilizes the occurrences of the life of Ram to present a very close picture to the readers of the Indian society. The novel is a shadow of the happenings and injustices that prevail in India. The novel is close to reality and explains the high poverty levels that persist in the country along with child abuse and beggary that is still a part of the Indian society. It also highlights the deep rooted Hindu and Muslim conflict that persists in the country. Ram resides in a slum and he presents firsthand accounts of the occurrences in the slum of Dharavi which is classified as "the largest slum in Asia." He indicates the lack of even the basic necessities in the slums and he says that it is a place where a person has to stand in long lines and wait for receiving water and even to go to the toilet. He explains the life in the slum in the following words when he is being arrested and taken by the police, “My departure from Asia’s biggest slum would make no difference to their lives. There would be the same queue for water in the morning, the same daily struggle to make it to the seven-thirty local in time.” His words are very true to reality as this slum has been marked to be an area which has stayed at its place for about 4 decades. The slum is home to 6.5 million people who live in a ratio of approximately 18000 people per acre. This indicates the cramming and lack of space for the people to live. The area does not have proper provision of electricity and it also lacks proper water supply. Slumdog Millionaire tries to indicate these conditions of despair that still persist in India in an era of the twenty first century when man has moved ahead to acquire technological breakthroughs that were beyond human consideration. It has been seen that there has been a great surge in the people residing in slums from the period of 1981 to 2001 in India. The number of people in slums has increased from 27.9 million to 61.8 million. This clearly highlights the rising poverty in the country and the novel presents this with the accounts provided by Ram about his life in the slum (Jacobson 2007; Page 2007; Vikas 2008). Child abuse and abduction of children is also a major issue in India. Children are kidnapped by beggar mafias that persist in India and work in an organized fashion to keep their business working. Ram presents with his account of falling into the hands of these abductors who try to force him into this profession. He explains the brutalities that these people can resort to by explaining the physical handicaps that they induce on young children. The purpose of this is to create sympathy in the heart of people for giving money to these young children. Ram also narrates of how these people properly train the beggars and teach them with techniques and ways of approaching people and beg for money which is eventually taken by the mafia from the children. The beggar mafia has long persisted in India but it has not faced severe government attention which may be the reason why it still flourishes in the country. Countless accounts of children being separated from their families are seen. The data from the police department puts forward the abduction of children to be as high as 44,000 but unofficial statistics claim that about one million children become victims to these abductions on an annual basis. There are gangs operating in the country which first kidnap children and then either force them to beg or they have to face worst consequences which include sexual exploitation. These children are undernourished and are not provided with their basic needs. Child beggary is a part of the Indian society though an official act was passed to prevent begging in the country in the year 1959. The narration of Ram presented the plight of young children whose lives are ruined by these mafia groups that operate in the country (Andrabi 2009; Vikas 2008). Vikas Swarup has also used his book to present the ongoing tensions that persist in India. India is a country which is home to people from many religions which include Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. The author uses the name of the main character which is Ram Mohammad Thomas to signify the presence of these religious groups in the country. The changes in the names which are assigned to the main character also symbolize the ongoing confusion and conflict that persists in the country. This is particularly true of the Hindus and the Muslims. The religious conflict is considered to be present in the Indian society since a very long period. The construction of a mosque in the sixteenth century by Muslims in Ayodhya which is a north Indian town became a very controversial subject. This was because the Hindus believed that the location where the mosque was constructed was religiously significant to them as their Lord Rama was born in that place. In the year 1992, the mosque was targeted by Hindus and this led to a cascade of bloody events leading to the death of 2000 people. A similar episode was repeated in the year 2002 in the state of Gujarat. This episode also resulted in extreme bloodshed and the death toll was again above thousand. Many innocent lives were lost in these revolts. The religious conflict in the Indian Society is very deep rooted and still persists in the country (CNN.com 2002; Kaplan n.d.). The brilliance and coordination with which Vikar Swarup has compiled his book Slumdog Millionaire cannot be denied. It is not an ordinary novel but it is rather a book which provides the reader with insights into the major aspects and drawbacks of the Indian society that are neglected and ignored. Poverty, child abuse and religious conflicts are major social issues that persist in India and they need to be truly dealt with. The book utilizes fiction to explain to not only entertain the reader but also to make him aware with occurrences in a society of this world. Works Cited Andrabi, Jalees. Beggar mafia thrives on lost children. The National. 18 Jan 2009. Web 22 Jun. 2011. “Ayodhya: India's religious flashpoint.”CNN.com. 6 Dec. 2002. Web 22 Jun. 2011. Jacobson, Mark. Dharavi: Mumbai’s Shadow City. National Geographic. May 2007. Web 22 Jun. 2011. Kaplan, Robert D. Behind Mumbai. The Atlantic. N.d. Web 22 Jun. 2011. Page, Jeremy. Indian slum population doubles in two decades. The Times.18 May 2007. Web 22 Jun. 2011. Top of Form Swarup, Vikas. Slumdog Millionaire: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2008. Print. Bottom of Form Read More