Leslie Udwin’s documentary “India’s Daughter,” transports us to that harrowing December night, when 23-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh, more well known as Nirbhaya, the fearless one, boarded a bus with her male companion in South Delhi. What ensued further is not less than any nightmare, and evident from the protests that followed the heinous crime, a fear that every woman, in every Indian city, big or small, lives with every day.
The documentary shows conversations with the parents and a close friend, as well as family photographs of the victim as a child and their accounts of her personality and career ambitions. It also includes interviews with the two lawyers who defended the men convicted of Jyoti’s rape and murder.
Udwin speaks to the parents of the accused, as well as the wife of one of the men. She shows how poorly they live, in makeshift brick houses loosely covered by plastic sheet roofs. She chronicles the crowded slums where the men last dwelled before they were arrested. An expert tells the filmmakers that violence against women is a common occurrence in such societies.
Touching a Raw Nerve
One feels helpless and distraught, watching the parents recount their memories, dreams and aspirations for their daughter, as well as the last few days of her struggle post the brutal rape. But it’s the interview with one of the accused — Mukesh Singh, the driver of the bus where the attack took place — that has touched a raw nerve. Sitting on a stool in a prison cell, the casually dressed and calm-looking Singh, who is awaiting a death sentence for his role in the attack, lays the blame for that night on the victim, and makes derogatory comments about Indian women and their place in society.
A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” Singh says in the film. “A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. … Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes,” he says, triggering a series of emotions from the audience.
While many blame Singh’s attitude to lack of education, some feel that only a change in the mindset will make any difference. “The attitude and mindset can only be changed by education, which will hopefully keep people from committing such horrendous crimes,” says Chitra Deepesh of Monmouth Junction, New Jersey.
Apart from the attitude and the heinous rape, it is the brutality that many say is unfathomable to them. “I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that they put an iron rod inside her,” says Rinku Kapur of West Windsor, New Jersey, wondering what form of sexual desire did the act meet. Blaming the act on satisfying their male ego, Kapur says she hopes for each girl to have “self-worth and the courage to fight and survive in this chauvinistic world.”
Shocking Attitudes
In an interview with CNN, Udwin described the people she spoke with – the attorneys, the lawyers, and the culprits – as “ordinary, apparently normal and certainly unremarkable men.” But one cannot help but notice that Udwin’s documentary illustrates how even people with power in India harbor shockingly similar attitudes.
One of the lawyers who represented the attackers says he would burn his own daughter alive if she behaved dishonorably. Another defense lawyer gestures with his hands to describe women as “flowers” who must be protected by men and “diamonds” who face inevitable assault if they end up in the wrong places.
“Hope girls are perceived more than just a flower,” says Sabala Kalvakota of Franklin Park, New Jersey, referring to the defense lawyers’ remarks. “It was disgusting to watch how lawyers, educated men were making a case for tolerance, democracy, poverty.”
But aside from the horrific details of the incident, the documentary attempts to look at the bigger picture. In one scene, an Indian justice describes how she has been unable to make sense of such a horrific attack. In another, a former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit places the blame on a society that puts girls and women second to men from the moment they are born — one where patriarchal practices become ingrained in children from an early age.
Defaming India’s Image
Whilst politicians in India demanded a ban of the program in India, claiming it will defame India’s image, the decided to air it earlier than planned on March 4 night, instead of the scheduled date of March 8, International Women’s Day. Udwin reportedly flew out of India for fear she could be arrested. Many in India were of the opinion that the documentary appeared to encourage and incite violence against women.
According to New York City-based filmmaker Tirlok Malik, the ban is completely against the right to freedom of expression. “The film shows both the sides of the story,” Malik told News India Times, adding that while one’s heart goes out to the victims’ parents, one does not feel any compassion with the rapist. “Committing the rape is one thing, but the brutality was unforgiving,” he said.
Filmmaker and news anchor Joya Dass disagrees with Malik and cites a personal example stressing the futility of the ban. When Dass was filing paperwork to shoot her own film in India on curable blindness with Sankara Eye Care Institutions back in 2009, she submitted the necessary paperwork to the consulate in New York, including a proposal laying out the reasons why conditions like cataracts, glaucoma, exist in the Indian population due to years of intermarriage, general neglect and lack of education. The government turned her down the first time on the grounds that she was going to represent India “in a bad light.”
It is this Indian mentality that is the prime cause of such bans, several contend. “The reason why the BBC documentary offends us is not its essential truth, but the ignominy of an outsider pointing it out to us,” writes R. Jagannathan in First Post. He goes on to argue that Muslims in India would be equally offended if a documentary was made showing how Indian Islam treats it women.
But that said, a documentary or a movie is not going to change people’s mind or attitude, even as it offends sensibilities. “However, by banning a film, the government is making a choice for you, which I do not approve of,” says Madhvi Thatte of Los Angeles. “I do not want my government to make a decision on what I can or cannot watch and restrict my freedom,” she adds.