n December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old medical student in Delhi, India was brutally gang raped by a group of men in the back of a bus and then thrown out on the street to die.
Though the young woman eventually succumbed to her injuries, her attack set off nationwide protests, prompted the passage of long-stalled anti-sexual violence legislation, and helped kickstart a national conversation about violence against women.
As these events unfolded, filmmaker Vibha Bakshi began filming for what would become the documentary ‘Daughters of Mother India.’
“Today I stand here as a very proud daughter of India,” Bakshi said at a screening of her film at Asia Society in New York on Tuesday. “The way India reacted to a gender crime, I don’t think many countries have reacted that way, and I cling on to that hope that this momentum doesn’t stop.”
Bakshi said that “a cry of my conscience” prompted her to make the film, but initially she doubted she would ever get the access she needed to make it.
“I was trying to gain access to the police, which was impossible,” she said.
“The words ‘journalist,’ ‘filmmaker,’ and ‘camera’ were very bad words with the police.” Eventually, through her connections, she managed to get a meeting with the police commissioner to plead her case.
“The meeting lasted two minutes,” she recalled. “I told him: ‘I’m a stakeholder in this society, and if this momentum dies, I have everything to lose.’ And he said, ‘I’m a father of two daugthers.’ We had gained access to the police control and command room for the first time in the history of the police.”
After the screening, an audience member asked Bakshi why she thought the BBC documentary India’s Daughter — which also explored the 2012 gang rape and has drawn criticism from some women’s rights activists in India — was banned in the country while Daughters of Mother India achieved wide distribution and even earned India’s National Film Award from the country’s president.
“If I answer this question I’ll be in a lot of trouble,” Baskshi joked. She added that she didn’t know why India’s Daughter was banned and that she could only speak on behalf of her own film, noting that she was working from an Indian perspective and that it was important for her to “leave people with hope.”
She said that her film’s “intent and emotions” have been praised across Indian academia and activist circles. “The activists felt that there was a voice in the film — that there is change happening, because they’ve been working relentlessly on the ground for years now,” Bakshi said. “It just resonated with them.”
“I don’t know if this film is going to change things dramatically,” she added. “But I will cling on to that hope that change is possible.”
– The Asia Society
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