Every time a film about India made by a Western director gains critical acclaim in the West, two related phenomena seem to also occur: the greatest hits of negative stereotypes are brought out and served up in the film (think poverty, squalor and general backwardness), even as the “usual suspects” emerge to tout its merits. I am referring, of course, to the comprador class of critics; those native-born, self-styled authorities who are summoned to validate the authenticity of the work at hand and to defend it against the potential critiques of their brethren. With the Oscar winner, Slumdog Millionaire (2008), one witnesses the re-emergence of both phenomena. In such instances a third phenomenon also frequently occurs, namely, the referencing of the last instance of such a cinematic “milestone” — in this case, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) — as a marker of how far we (as a Western/ global culture) have come. Hamid Dabashi has noted the recurrence of the comprador phenomenon in recent times: