This has defeated the government’s very purpose of protecting India’s izzat (honour) from what they project as the cruel, critical and uncharitable prying eyes of the rest of the world. Because we are ordered to think that the entire world is out to get us, we must safeguard our reputation from external assaults, all the while turning a blind eye to internal assaults that wait in the wings for our womenfolk.
The hullabaloo began in early March when the country’s national media published reports and aired news bulletins about excerpts from an upcoming BBC documentary, India’s Daughter, which was to be broadcast on 8 March – International Women’s Day. The subject of the film was the abominable gang rape of a physiotherapy student aboard a moving bus in New Delhi on 16 December 2012.
The truth is that we are scared and ashamed of owning up to our misogyny
The girl, subsequently rechristened “Nirbhaya” (Hindi for “the fearless woman”), boarded a private bus with her boyfriend after watching a movie in a posh South Delhi mall late in the evening. Nirbhaya was not only sexually violated, but also brutally assaulted with an iron rod to the gruesome extent that, by the time she received medical help, her intestines were dangling from her genitals.
Recalling the graphic details of this unpardonable, nauseating crime, even over two years later, I can feel my blood pressure shoot up as I type this. I was working with The Indian Express then and we recorded every minute, every shameful detail, of her attackers’ monstrosity. This was not just another sexual crime: it was a sin. It was also a belated rude jolt for an India that had too long popped sleeping pills when it came to gender issues.
Leslee Udwin, the filmmaker who interviewed Mukesh Singh, one of Nirbhaya’s rapists, in West Delhi’s Tihar jail, was told that they had intensified the assault on her because she had fought back and even tried to protect her boyfriend from being attacked by the rapists when he came to her rescue. Singh’s “simple” point is why India’s Daughter has not only been banned in India, but also led the government to scurry around for fear of ignominy amid the international community. As if the world was singing paeans in India’s honour before the ban!
Udwin’s film is part of BBC’s Storyville series. It was slated for telecast on India’s NDTV 24x7 news channel and on BBC Four on 8 March. That is, until the “ban raj” came down on it. An FIR was registered against the filmmakers on 3 March. The following day, the Indian government banned the film from being broadcast by way of a court order. But in today’s day and age, when the virtual world has decapitated the practical world, a ban means nothing. YouTube becomes one’s friend and ally when one wants to spread the word on anything that has been muffled or muzzled.
The ban on the film fails to discriminate between shielding a crime and a criminal mind-set
Obviously, once India’s Daughter was up on YouTube for everyone to see, it went viral – until the ban raj stepped in again and ordered the web company to remove the film. YouTube obeyed. Needless to say, India has reached the stage where it can exert its might before the world and be heard. But, sadly, what should remain “confidence” can also mutate into “arrogance”. Before those of us who were itching to watch the film could lay our hands on the YouTube version, it was gone. Some of my friends who had managed to see it said that it did not show India in a light any worse than the world already knew.
What are the ramifications of the ban?
First, the world is laughing at India for its thoroughly misplaced understanding of democracy, its sense of insecurity, and its inability to discriminate between shielding a crime and a criminal mind-set, the sort that leads to such incidents.
Second, while we can indulge in as much breast-beating as we please about the film being a “conspiracy” against India and a measure to tarnish our reputation before the world, the truth is that we are scared and ashamed of owning up to our misogyny. We do not want to accept that women are still seen as commodities that must comply with the rules laid down by men if they want to be allowed to remain intact and alive, to be able to eat and wear what they are given.
Third, had the government not sprung into action to ban the telecast of India’s Daughter and then sought its hasty removal from YouTube, the film might not have gone as far as New York City, where it was screened on 9 March at Baruch College with Hollywood actors Meryl Streep, Dakota Fanning and Frieda Pinto in attendance. I shudder to think of the shame Pinto must have felt being there as an Indian and as an Indian woman.
Yes, shame. Not for the victim, but for the criminal. Shame for a society that has perpetuated the crime and failed to take timely action to stem the rot. Instead of running around like headless chickens and banning India’s Daughter, the Indian government should have kept quiet about its telecast, allowed it to proceed as planned, and using the telecast as well as International Women’s Day as a peg, taken a pledge to ensure that such shame is never seen in India or the world ever again.
With Parliament in session, the government should have moved a resolution to conduct compulsory gender sensitization workshops from the primary school and village local body level upwards to instil in people the idea of respecting and helping women in need. On the other hand, the government should also have made self-defence classes mandatory for all girls over 10. We hear of baby girls being sexually assaulted every now and then too, but they cannot fight back. Elderly women are not forgiven either.
In the simplest words: sexual assault on a woman is a case of pathology. It needs to be detected early and treated immediately. The treatment is of two kinds: preventative (which is what gender sensitization and self-defence will achieve for men and women, respectively) and curative (which is a function of law and order, on which the Indian legislature is working).