White colonialist types should really leave India alone

Frankly I think if you started interviewing residents of the state of Georgia, you might find unhappy people who think they were depicted in a poor light in the movie Deliverance. At a national level, Deliverance was made about a region of America, by Americans for Americans so it is really not the same thing as this movie made by an Australian for English speaking countries and about India.

People who make movies about other countries and cultures, especially when they have never lived there, have no real idea of the culture and history of the country (who don't know the difference between an Imarti and a Jalebi), have a responsibility not only to their target audience and the Academy award voters, but also to the country that they are depicting. They have a responsibility to make the depiction as fair and honest as possible and make use of experts and locals to make their depiction authentic.

If they choose to disregard objectivity and fairness in their portrayal due to arrogance, laziness, ignorance, or simply to make their movie more emotionally manipulative and more likely to win awards by depicting poverty (as I think has happened here), they open themselves to criticism from the people they are portraying in this manner.

I personally would be equally critical of this kind of one-sided stereotypical depiction regardless of which country or state was being depicted.

I do apologise to people like you who may have genuinely enjoyed the movie for spoiling it somewhat, that was not my intention.

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I see beautiful irony in the fact that you are defending the so-called benefits of colonization and at the same time claiming not to be xenophobic.

I suppose it is a coincidence then if your overall stance is pretty much the same as every white supremacist group out there: white people brought civilization to the world through colonization and if said world is more miserable after said process of civilization than before, it has nothing to do with white people, but with the indigenous people who simply refuse to renounce their savage ways.

Unfortunately, this is nothing more than a condensate of deeply ethnocentric western education. Any history is necessarily biased towards the culture that produces it and world history as seen through western eyes certainly doesn't make exception, quite the contrary.

As for OP, he is absolutely right, the so-called "third-world" would do much better without any outside interference whatsoever. In fact, what keeps the third-world the third-world is precisely those interference; it is they who ensure the hegemony of western civilization over the rest of the world. Cheap tricks, intimidation and lies - World Bank, IMF, economic bullying, political assassinations, propaganda, arming opposing factions, coups etc. - not ingenuity.

Maybe you ought to look into the numerous assassinations of democratically elected leaders and the long list of democratically elected governments the "civilized world" has brought down in its short but glorious history every time their interest didn't coincide with the interests of the people in question.
And that's without mentioning the genocidal maniacs they often helped to put in power, nor the various death squads they trained in torture and other enhanced interrogation methods often on US soil before sending them on their merry way back to wherever they came from, Southeast Asia, Central Africa, Latin America etc.

At last but not least, the only reason why the first world can't help but perpetually interfere in other countries' affair is what completely escapes any member of our western societies and which is at the same time absolutely blatant to any outside observer: it is the first world which would collapse if every and any contact were forbidden between them, not the third. Without cheap labor, cheap resources and cheap dumping places for its pollutants, the first world would simply cease to exist because its very wealth is built upon the poverty of its unwitting economic "partners".

But of course, they should be content with their sewerage system. Surely, it is worth the trillions they stole at the same time and still do. Surely they would never lie about that, right? The most expensive sewerage system in the history of mankind, ladies and gentlemen! Totally worth it. Ask the Indians.

And for the record, I'm not even Indian and I too live in the Western World (Europe).


People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

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Dude. Indian valley civilization had well developed cities and bloody good sewage system. Its not because india couldnt built materialistic crap but its monuments and history has been destroyed, thanks to abhrahamic religions and of course british *beep*

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The kind of stereotypical trash with the religious undertones you are spouting about India I have read from the worst haters of India , mostly muslims or people from Pakistan. You really should have some integrity and stop posting political propaganda on a movie website. (Hindu councils, whitening creams and whatnot that you are quoting are all stereotypes spouted on India hater message boards).

Btw for your information people always want to change how they look. If some people in southern India and south east asia use whitening creams, then people in the west go in for plastic surgery, lipo, botox and whatnot.

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That's their fault. I have spent time with Indians and they are one of the most divided nations ever. They hate each other based on skin color, religion, caste, region, neighborhood, city etc. Not only India, but South Asia generally.
Re: White colonialist types

No offense, but if this was actually true, this board would be full of threads with Indians complaining about how Dev Patel and Sunny Pawar look nothing alike and probably aren't even from the same caste.

I don't know about South Asia generally, but the last thing I would describe Indian culture as is divided. If anything, it's the opposite: it's too inclusive. Indians suffer from mob psychology. If an Indian man walks into a room full of strangers, one Indian and the rest non-Indian, he will walk straight up to the Indian man and automatically assume that that man will want to be friends just because they're both Indian. There's a lack of individuality in general, and if you want to be seen as a "person who happens to be an Indian" instead of just an "Indian", Indian culture can be suffocating.

I don't get the western faux-outrage over inter-caste marriages. Is it "wrong" that American heiresses like Paris Hilton and Ivanka Trump would never even consider marrying the Average Joe? Most people in general don't want to marry lower than their socio-economic level.

As for the skin lightening issue, many cultures - India being one of them - have this stereotypical view that lighter skin in the abstract is more feminine and dainty and thus better on a woman. However, my family never talks about skin color, so obviously not all Indians feel that way. Btw, this is not just an Indian problem, a lot of cultures (European, Chinese etc) have traditionally expressed that a beautiful man should be relatively tall with a long, straight nose and a beautiful woman should be 'light'. It's not just an Indian thing.

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