I love it when people try to analyze something that was created decades ago...
You forget the era in which the film was made - there were NO Indian actors working in Hollywood, California, at that time! And if there were, their names had nowhere near the recognizeability (is that a word?) as Sellers' did.
Really - even the number of American Indians working in Hollywood at the time, can be counted on less than one hand. Same goes for most other races.
It's just how it was back then.
That said, if you place Hrundi into the locale, driving his Morgan 3-wheeler (still a popular English car at the time, though it was already some 30 years old), he's a pretty intelligent guy - a klutz, but still, a pretty intelligent guy, that's just trying to live the American dream, just like the rest of us. And, for him to even have a job in Hollywood in that era - let alone being in the States in that era, he must be doing something right...until he gets fired! Even the scenes with the elephant: Sellers was a class act, demanding that all of the paint be washed off of the elephant.
Think about it: at that time, all that the average American really knew about India, we learned from The Beatles! Technology was nothing like it is today - no cell phones, no personal computers, hell, most airliners still had piston engines, and propellers in 1968, and having that Morgan shipped over here privately would have cost a fortune. Anything that Hrundi would have learned about the States before coming over here, he would have learned from magazines or films, and we all know how accurate those can be.
Yeah, Hrundi was doing pretty good. I can't possibly see how anybody can consider that in itself, to be offensive, when we have thousands of people flocking over the border nowadays, just to setup their gang and drug networks.
If you read the trivia, you'll see that the entire film was improvised - there was no script, just a storyline to go by. That in itself says a lot for Sellers' portrayal. Not bad at all, for somebody who was a royal PITA to work with (Sellers).
Bravo.
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