Bollywood, usually focused on the travails of the well-heeled
and on Indian national glories, will turn to realism with a film
about racism faced by South Asians in the West.
I Am Proud to Be an Indian, due for January release, profiles
an Indian boy who migrates to England and endures daily harassment
by skinheads targetting his middle-class family.
While the title is true to Bollywood’s frequent patriotic tone,
the movie also shows immigrants from rivals India and Pakistan
coming together to fight racism.
Discrimination and the difficulties some South Asians face in
integration have been touched on in a number of Western
productions, the most successful of which was the 2002 British film
Bend It Like Beckham.
In Bollywood, however, the most common depiction of the West
features jet-setting young Indians at ease in both cultures.
”We all know that Indians are doing very well in software and
other businesses in the West but little is known about the problems
they face in the West in daily life due to their skin colour,” said
Sohail Khan, the film’s producer and lead actor.
Khan described racism as a ”big problem,” saying that while most
Westerners do not support skinheads, ”there are takers to their
ideology.”
”My film will highlight these issues and make Indians understand
that all is not good in the West. There is a dark side to Western
society too,” Khan told AFP.
While Khan grew up in India, he co-stars with two Pakistani-born
actors who immigrated to the West, Hina and Imran Ahmed. Hina, who
uses only one name, is a German citizen and Ahmed is a British
national.
Khan said he chose the two relatively unknown actors because he
needed ”someone born in Pakistan and brought up in a European
environment.”
”They give natural flair to the acting in the film,” said Khan,
noting that their English accents were believable.
The film, shot at a cost of just over one million dollars,
depicts skinheads trying to cause friction between the Indian and
Pakistani communities.
The movie’s Indian director Puneet Sira, who used to live in
London, said: ”We have shown in our film how skinheads weaken the
bonds between Indians and Pakistanis to achieve their goals, as
they find it impossible to defeat Indians and Pakistanis when they
are united on one platform.”
”It is shocking to see slogans such as ‘white is right’ in
Western countries. In a globalised world such slogans should not
exist, but unfortunately they do and lot of new immigrants face
problems,” Sira said. — Sapa