Chapter 7 - Slumdogs and Millionaires: Facts and Fictions of Indian (Under) development

Summary

Much ink has been spilled on the differences between Vikas Swarup's Q & A (2005) and the movie that was based on it, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The differences are important and substantial enough that repeatedly, when interviewed, Swarup was asked to explain whether or not he was jarred (as presumably were the interviewers) by the thinness of the relationship between the novel and its cinematic offspring. One such conversation was recorded in the Guardian, for instance:

They changed the title from Q & A to Slumdog Millionaire. (“That made a lot of sense,” says Swarup.) They changed the ending. (“Danny thought the hero should be arrested on suspicion of cheating on the penultimate question, not after he wins as I had it. That was a successful idea.”) They made friends into brothers, axed Bollywood stars and Mumbai hoodlums and left thrilling subplots on the cutting-room floor. Crucially, they changed the lead character's name from Ram Mohammad Thomas to Jamal Malik, thereby losing Swarup's notion that his hero would be an Indian everyman, one who sounded as though he was Hindu, Muslim and Christian. Instead, they made Jamal a Muslim whose mother is killed by a Hindu mob. (“It's more dramatically focused as a result, perhaps more politically correct.”)