[The film appears to be finally off the net. But not before lakhs in India have reportedly managed to view it. (See: <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Govt-ban-fails-to-prevent-lakhs-from-viewing-Nirbhaya-documentary/articleshow/46472361.cms>.)
The first comment, at sl. no. II below, by Jayati Ghosh, an academic-activist of some repute, is markedly restrained. The second one is only a tad less so. But never mind. Ghosh in her comment notes that "Kavita Krishnan - one of India's strongest progressive feminist voices, who was also interviewed for this documentary - has pointed out that there should be restraint in airing the film while the legal appeal is pending, so it does not affect the case." She, however, does not proceed to deal with the merits of this line argument rather upfront. She nevertheless asserts: "there is a point in exposing the depths of our societal depravity." And: "Trying to hide this, or prevent others from knowing about it, is not a solution. Instead, we have to confront this head on, precisely because this extreme form of patriarchy is so pervasive. Knowing our enemy - within and without - means facing all this, no matter how repulsive it may appear, because only then can we ever hope to change it." So it needs be emphatically underlined here that this argument as put forward by Krishnan and some others is, at best, just spurious. In India, (high pitched) public campaigns - street demonstrations, press conferences, public meets, mass petitions (online and offline) etc. - on an issue which is sub judice are only too common, regardless of the letters of the relevant law. And, ***many of those who have discovered and are mouthing this argument now in the past and even rather recently must have had been participants in such campaigns***. (I'd rather refrain from naming any specific instance here for very obvious reasons.) In this context, it'd be quite in order to draw attention to one of Krishnan's tweet: "Rapist Lynched After BBC Rape Documentary Aired @sarahdevin http://voc.tv/1w87moo This is wht we fought 2 resist 1/n" (look up: <https://twitter.com/kavita_krishnan>).] Again, that's just ridiculous. India has not discovered lynching only after the BBC film was aired. Then, there is hardly any time lag, perhaps none, between the film being accessible to Indian public and the enactment of the horrendous crime. It does quite conveniently gloss over the fact that "(p)rotests against the rape had begun on Wednesday and the agitators demanded that Khan be handed over to them. The protest snowballed into a violent agitation on Thursday which ultimately led to the lynching of Khan, say reports." (See: <http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-nagaland-angry-mob-lynches-man-accused-of-rape-2066470>.) So the protests had begun even before the film had been aired (not in India). And, far more importantly, it deliberately ignores the "race angle". ***But what is even more important is that the cat is now out of the bag: "Rapist Lynched After BBC Rape Documentary Aired @sarahdevin http://voc.tv/1w87moo ***This is wht we fought 2 resist*** [emphasis added]"! A clear admission that the "legal appeal pending" argument is just a ruse.*** Be that as it may, the second comment, reproduced below at sl. no. III, rather interestingly posits: "India's Daughter quietly listens in to what a rapist, murderer has to say. ***It doesn't rage*** [emphasis added], it doesn't even blink while doing so. And that just feels wrong." To sum up, it's just not necessary to "like" the film to raise voice against its ban. The ban sets a very dangerous precedence, regardless of whether one likes it or hates it.] I/III. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Editors-Guild-Demands-Lifting-of-Ban-on-BBC-Documentary/2015/03/06/article2701212.ece Editors Guild Demands Lifting of Ban on BBC Documentary By IANS Published: 06th March 2015 10:39 PM Last Updated: 06th March 2015 10:39 PM NEW DELHI: The Editors Guild of India on Friday appealed to the government to revoke the ban on airing of the BBC documentary on the December 16, 2012 gang-rape, terming the move "wholly unwarranted". ***In a statement, the Guild said the documentary, 'Storyville: India's daughter', portrayed the courage, sensibility and liberal outlook of a family traumatised by the brutality inflicted on their daughter, the continuing "shameful attitudes" towards women among the interviewed rapist as well as the educated, including the defence lawyers.*** It said their rationale that the ban was in the interest of justice and public order as the film "created a situation of tension and fear amongst women". The statement also said that the convict would use the media to further his case in the appeal that was subjudice, seems to be an after-thought. "The message that emerges from the documentary is wholly positive and its power is such as to make people re-examine their own attitudes and the attitudes of people around them," it said. The Guild appealed to the central government to revoke the ban and enable the people to view "the positive and powerful documentary touching on the freedom, dignity and safety of women". The documentary, by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin, has triggered an uproar over the interview of Mukesh Singh, one of the six rapists of the 23-year-old paramedical student. II/III. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/06/indias-daughter-delhi-rape India's Daughter: since the Delhi rape things have got worse Jayati Ghosh Yes, the documentary had its faults, but our society's depravity must be exposed if we are to change its attitudes British filmmaker Leslee Udwin speaking about her documentary film India's Daughter. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP Friday 6 March 2015 18.02 GMT Last modified on Saturday 7 March 2015 00.08 GMT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ The day after the Indian government banned the BBC documentary India's Daughter, on the horrific gang rape and killing of a student in Delhi, a 10,000-strong mob broke into a jail in a town in Assam, dragged out an alleged rapist, beat him to death and hung his body up for public view. Does this mean that people in India are now so outraged by violence against women that they are seeking rough justice of their own? Sadly, no: the patriarchy and abuse of power that created the conditions for that appalling act in Delhi are alive and flourishing, and indeed are expressed in both this lynching and in some of the more aggressive reactions to the film. Indeed, the notion of rape as particularly bad because it affects the "honour" of women, rather than their basic personhood and physical security, is a leading cause of such reactions. India's Daughter: 'I made a film on rape in India. Men's brutal attitudes truly shocked me' Read more The documentary, made by a woman who is herself a rape survivor, has surprisingly been criticised by the government and women's activists, including some who were at the forefront of the widespread public protests after the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in December 2012. The banning of the film (because of shocking interviews with one of the rapists and his lawyer, who in effect argued that the woman had asked for it by resisting and being in public places at 9pm) has been justified on the grounds that it provides a platform for the most appalling and regressive views, and amounts to an incitement of violence against women. The Indian government's real concerns are less about the safety of women than the international image of the country. They worry that the documentary will continue to present India in a bad light rather than showcase its achievements and new government. (The fact that such achievements - especially for women - are few and hard to find is not really considered.) Shoving unpleasant truths under the carpet to display a shining facade to foreigners is an old habit of many governments. But some of the arguments against the film are more thoughtful and must be taken seriously. Kavita Krishnan - one of India's strongest progressive feminist voices, who was also interviewed for this documentary - has pointed out that there should be restraint in airing the film while the legal appeal is pending, so it does not affect the case. She also suggests there could be a "white saviour" mentality implicitly at work in the very conception of the film that could depict brutality against women as a specific socio-cultural problem of India; and she objects to the title, which describes women as daughters rather than people in their own right. In the Guardian, the author Nilanjana Roy has said that providing such publicity to a rapist and his obnoxious views risks making him into a celebrity, drowning out the voices of all those who spoke up in the aftermath of the attack on Jyoti Singh. It is certainly true that India is not the only country where women are routinely denigrated It is certainly true that India is not the only country where women are routinely denigrated and their rights to personal safety are implicitly taken as contingent upon their ("good") behaviour. The case of the former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and (within India) the allegations against RK Pachauri, who headed the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggest the tendency to blame the victim is rampant among the international elite. The culture of patriarchy is inextricably linked with global capitalism. Even so, there is a point in exposing the depths of our societal depravity. We cannot escape the reality in India that the huge popular movement against that particular atrocity and the subsequent moves to change the laws to ensure more protection for women have so far borne little fruit. If anything, things have probably got worse. And official lip service to the cause of women has often added more insult to injury. In a kneejerk reaction after the public outcry, a "Nirbhaya fund" (Nirbhaya - "fearless" - was the name used initially to conceal Jyoti Singh's real identity) was set up by the government last April to improve security for women. That fund, paltry though it was, has barely been used. The current government has been blatant in its complete disregard for implementing safety measures for women and girls. And the rapes and physical attacks continue. At least part of this is because the attitudes displayed on film by the rapist and his lawyer are not unusual - they are widespread across India (and many countries) in all sections of society. Trying to hide this, or prevent others from knowing about it, is not a solution. Instead, we have to confront this head on, precisely because this extreme form of patriarchy is so pervasive. Knowing our enemy - within and without - means facing all this, no matter how repulsive it may appear, because only then can we ever hope to change it. III. http://www.firstpost.com/india/man-raped-indias-daughter-heres-wish-hadnt-watched-bbc-documentary-2137299.html Here's why I wish I hadn't watched Leslee Udwin's BBC documentary India's Daughter by Piyasree Dasgupta Mar 7, 2015 08:43 IST Leslee Udwin's India's Daughter concludes with a lingering, blurry shot of the December 16 gangrape victim's mother: aware of a camera staring back at her, struggling to keep the personal away from the public and hold back tears. As one stray tear rolls down her left cheek, Udwin's frame melts into an image of pyres burning on a smog-cloaked river bank. The victim's mother's voice rings through the image, "The sound of her breathing stopped, the lines on the monitor started flattening." As she finishes talking the camera zooms in to a pyre, the black fonts of the last line stand out against the quivering flames in the background. It's the kind of camera technique used in movies. It was hard enough to listen to the mother recollect the final moments of her daughter, but Udwin's documentary can't leave it there. It must make the heavy handed and forced trick of cutting in the image of the pyre And then you start to think: what question did Udwin ask the victim's mother that she narrates in great detail such a painful experience to a camera. While, 'what were his/her last words' may be a standard question many journalists clinically ask the kin of the dead, it doesn't become less exploitative with repetition. Or less traumatizing for an interviewee. That closing shot also reveals Udwin's greatest sin: A predilection for the dramatic, to disdain nuance in favour of excess. Mukesh Singh in a screengrab from the video. Mukesh Singh in a screengrab from the video. The primary trajectory that the documentary follows is a reconstruction of the day's events; two narratives run simultaneously, following on each other's heels. The effect -- intended or not -- is exploitative. Asked to talk about the day the rape took place, convict Mukesh Singh says nonchalantly, "We decided we will go to GB road. People do wrong things there," as the camera pans on prostitutes lined up the road. Immediately, the documentary cuts to the victim's mother talking about how the day started off for her. "She came back home and was very happy that the exams were over..." she says. At another point, Mukesh is saying, "Then they said, she must be dead. Throw her, throw her out." The documentary juxtaposes Mukesh's voice for a while with a visual of the victim's mother weeping, her head in her hands. India's Daughter has all the finesse of the average Bollywood potboiler -- which may be amusing in fiction but is offensive in the retelling of heinous crime. The juxtaposition of two narratives for high drama feels very wrong, where the grief of the victim's family becomes a cinematographic effect to enhance the impact of the rapist's account. It is clear what the director perhaps intended to do: to try every trick in the book to maximise the impact of the story. But this is a horror tale that needs no embroidering. To 'jazz' it up is to do great disservice to an already gut-wrenching incident. And then there is the narrative arc. What purpose is served by making the perpetrator and the victim's kin recollect details of that day? Not only does it feed a voyeuristic curiousity, but by also giving a disproportionate amount of time to Mukesh Singh, the documentary feels like it should be titled not India's Daughter, but rather The Man Who Raped India's Daughter. Mukesh Singh gets an uninterrupted stage to say his "piece", as when he says, "The juvenile put his hand inside her and something came out. I guess it was her intestines..." He adds, "Later I asked him, what happened with the woman's stuff. He said, I wrapped it in a towel and threw it." It takes a special kind of resilience to sit and listen to such vile things, and to do so without interrupting or objecting. But in this case, the consequence is that Mukesh Singh, a rapist and murderer gets to justify his crime. And all we can do is to watch powerlessly, as we do when women are raped over and again in this country. In a more traditional news interview, Udwin could have asked, "Do you not think that is cruel and inhuman?" It would have added a much needed counterpoint to Mukesh's ghastly soliloquy. The rapists' lawyers ML Sharma and AP Singh too get to voice their misogynistic, warped ideas with great flourish. "A woman is like a diamond. If you leave her on the street, the dogs will come and take her," says Sharma. "I stand by what I had said," declares AP Singh who had said that he will burn his sister or daughter if she ventured out in the evening like the victim. As we know, these men, like many others, have voiced such dangerous opinions in the past without consequences. The film doesn't antagonise them either. That's why the documentary makes me uncomfortable. While it talks about the protests in India, and the news laws that were passed, the film in itself fails to embody the resistance that either the victim or the people of the country put up against patriarchy and sexual violence. Pitted against the rapist and his lawyers, the victim's parents look helpless and spent. India's Daughter quietly listens in to what a rapist, murderer has to say. It doesn't rage, it doesn't even blink while doing so. And that just feels wrong. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
