Shashi Tharoor is a contributing writer for the Project Syndicate news series. Tharoor, a novelist and commentator, is a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations.
Slumdog Oscar
By Shashi Tharoor
NEW DELHI – Indians haven’t often had much to root for at the Oscars, Hollywood’s annual celebration of cinematic success. Only two Indian movies have been nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category in the last 50 years, and neither won.
So Indians take vicarious pleasure in the triumphs of “mainstream” pictures with an Indian connection – the seven Oscars won by Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi in 1983, for instance, or the success of The Sixth Sense, written and directed by a Philadelphian of Indian descent, Manoj Night Shyamalan.