The release of Slumdog Millionaire (2008, director Danny Boyle) gave new boost to a form of tourism in Mumbai’s shantytowns. This tourism involves especially Western visits to the slums with a purpose learn about life in them (and occasionally donate). Such slumming thrives in Dharavi’s megaslum but as tourist business is still monopolised by one company that maintains good relations with the community, there are rules: no photos, no avoiding touch and no covering one’s nose during the tour. In this presentation I unpack the significance of such community-imposed rules from an epistemological viewpoint. In other words, I explore what these rules reveal about Indian ways of knowing and communicating with tourists as well as how tourist influx modifies local knowledge and interaction.

1. Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli (r.tzanelli@leeds.ac.uk)
Manipulating the Western tourist gaze in Mumbai‟s slums
Image Lecercle, Flickr (Creative Commons)

2. Mumbai‟s celebrity status
• A regional and national financial „articulation‟ with
over 18million population that is growing fast
• Home of Bollywood industry with its own airport
and…
• its own slum „problem‟ thriving due to its
prohibitive estate market (amongst other reasons)
• About 55% of residents live in its shantytowns, and
most of them in its megaslum, Dharavi

3. Dharavi:
snuggling between Mumbai‟s two main train stations and next to its airport
Image Mark Hillary, Flickr (Creative Commons)

4. Dispelling wrong impressions about Dharavi
• Home to about 15,000 small
businesses
• Home of Mumbai’s sole
efficient recycling industry
• Home of multicultural
communities:
Tamils, Muslims, south
Indians, Maharashtrians, Konk
anis, potters, leather
workers, plastic
recyclers, goldsmiths, garment
workers, craftsmen
Image Padmanaba01 (top) and
Lececle (bottom), Flickr
(Creative Commons)

5. And filming ground for Slumdog
Millionaire in 2008
• Screenwriter Simon
Beaufoy, directors Danny Boyle
and (India) Loveen Tandan
• The film scooped Oscars and
became popular in UK and US
with Indian version also released
• Plot: A Mumbai teen who grew
up in the slums, becomes a
contestant on the Indian version
of "Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire?" He is arrested under
suspicion of cheating, and while
being interrogated, events from
his life history are shown which
explain why he knows the
answers (see IMDB)
• Some scenes shot in Mumbai’s
slums, including Dharavi but….

6. …it mainly enhanced Dharavi as
global slum tourist destination
• Main tour operator Reality
Tours collaborates with
communities
• Tour guides recruited also
from slum localities
• 80% of profits donated to
slum projects
(education, hygiene, health
etc…)
• See video on Reality Tours
website
Photo Thomas Galvez, Flickr
(Creative Commons)

7. Tour programme and code
• RECYCLING AREA Old computers, parts and plastics come from all over the world to Dharavi to be
recycled. See the recycling plants in which separation and melting of plastics takes place.
• ROOFTOP VISIT There is nothing like the view from a Dharavi factory rooftop. The tin hutments that
house so many human lives stretch on as far as you can see, and birds screech overhead in the blue sky. You
will never forget this view!
• BISCUIT BAKERY Taste the tea biscuits that you can buy anywhere in Mumbai, hot and fresh at the source!
• POPADDOM MAKING Watch the women of Dharavi make popaddoms, the essential appetizer of any
Indian meal, by baking them on wooden baskets that are turned upside-down.
• VISIT TO A RESIDENT‟S HOUSE Gain an understanding of how the incredible people of Dharavi live.
• KUMBHARWADA POTTERY COLONY Watch artisans create all types of pots out of unfired, sundried
clay.
• COMMUNITY CENTRE The Community Centre, supported by funds from the tour, provides education in
English, computers and other soft skills to the teenagers and young adults of Dharavi. Other activities take
place here such as a library and indoor games. Visitors experience what matters most to Reality Tours... the
men, women and children that make this dynamic community one of the most vibrant places in Mumbai.
BUT NO CAMERA POLICY for the whole tour (really? )

8. Are Dharavi‟s residents object of
fascination for foreign visitors?
• Global boom in „slum tourism‟: African
slums, New Delhi (Saalam Bombay), Mumbai
(Slumdog Millionaire), Rio de Janeiro etc…
• Fascination with poverty leads to accusations of
performing „poorism‟: the affluent world gazing
upon other‟s life, tribulations and misery…
• Tourist gaze (Urry 2002; Urry and Larsen 2011)
suggests practices of gazing upon other cultures
organised by tourist industry
• Ethical issues abound….

9. Humans gazed upon not passive
recipients of tourist gaze
• The local gaze „based on a more complex, two-sided picture, where both the
tourist and local gazes exist, affecting and feeding each other‟ (Maoz 2006:
222).
• Ethnographic work in India revealed that localities perceive of tourists as
hedonistic, shallow, rude and „badly educated and easily deceived‟ (ibid.
225) – an viewpoint occasionally available in the international press by
educated slumdwellers.
• Twin response to gazing as submission or internalisation and resistance or
rejection might also unveil the workings of „staged authenticity‟ online (also
MacCannell 1973).
• What is wilfully perceived as reciprocity and hospitality is in fact a form of
veiled resistance, a resentful gaze back at the source of tourist gazing
• Herzfeld: „the increasing inferiority of the non-reciprocating guest reaches its
extreme in the selfish and insensitive tourist, who finds that “the natives are
friendly” but fails to understand that this friendliness masks an enduring
contempt‟ (Herzfeld 1992: 61; Tzanelli 2010: 116; Tzanelli 2011)

10. Local performances, resistance and the
„counter-gaze‟ in Dharavi
• No photos policy and no
covering nose demand of
localities
• Emphasis on local
industriousness, lack of tips
policy, and even cleanliness of
children that are properly
educated
• Emphasis on family bonds and
local camaraderie or guild
consciousness also projected
online (Reality Tours
website, global journalists‟
tours)
Image Padmanaba01, Flickr
(Creative Commons)

11. Discussion: is there real resistance?
• Self-conscious of foreign
understandings of what is clean,
proper, orderly and „civilised‟
behaviour and environment
• Parallel protests against release of
Slumdog Millionaire betray reaction
against particular practices of „gazing‟
as demeaning
• Expectation of fair remuneration by
tourist provider
• Banning access to sensory pleasure for
tourists on location – everything can
be re-constructed and re-narrated from
memory only
• Thus experience tied to
1. Western conceptions of industry and
industriousness for community to be
re-dignified
2. National conceptions of nation-
building and the original people