BEASTLY TALES AND BAN MANIACS

Central to the film India’s Daughter is an interview in Tihar jail, Delhi, with Mukesh Singh, rapist and driver of the bus aboard which a 23-year-old medical student was brutally gangraped and murdered in Delhi in December 2012. He says: “You can’t clap with one hand— it takes two hands. A decent girl won’t roam around at night. A girl is more responsible for rape than a boy… about 20 per cent of girls are good.”

Manohar Lal Sharma, the defence lawyer who represents Mukesh Singh and three other rapists on death row, is seen on camera saying, “The ‘lady’, on the other hand, you can say a ‘girl’ or ‘woman’ [is] more precious than a gem, than a diamond. It is up to you how you want to keep that diamond in your hand. If you put your diamond on the street, certainly the dog will take it out. You can’t stop it.” Another defence lawyer, AP Singh, also pops up, adding, “If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farm house, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.”

British filmmaker Leslee Udwin, director of India’s Daughter, could easily have done her exercise of exposing patriarchal attitudes by naming the film ‘India’s Sons’ instead. Binary opposites sometimes come in handy. The last time I checked, the term ‘Mother India’ implicates a form of patriotism that licenses India as a nation state to rape its own ‘daughters’ in Kashmir, the Northeast and central parts of India in the name of sovereignty. Shocked to see themselves in the mirror, India’s sons in the Parliament of ‘Mother India’ called for a ‘ban’ on the film. Proudly, India’s Daughter has joined the record of five bans in a week, along with beef, Fifty Shades of Grey, 69 NGOs from receiving foreign funds, the word ‘lesbian’ in the film Dum Laga Ke Haisha and filmmaker Anand Patwardhan’s website Patwardhan.com.

I should sue these so-called saviours of ‘Indian ethos’, the incorrigible ‘ban maniacs’ whom we call ‘ministers’, for forcing me to watch a mediocre documentary by a ‘British feminist sister’ on how beastly we are. With its snippets of growling tigers, tragic music and testimonies that actually leave the perpetrators triumphal, Udwin’s film is 59 minutes full of descriptions of horror juxtaposed with the victim’s mother crying, spiced up with uncontextualised public protests. Not to say the film does not go beyond the obvious, but it banks on vile statements to engage the audience. Udwin, who spells Tihar as ‘Tahir’, and the other Oxford expert in the film who frequents but can’t properly pronounce ‘Verma Commission’ can take refuge in ‘objectivity’. As a filmmaker who has spent close to a decade working with various communities, particularly in conflict situations, I am against objectivity. No one can be objective. It’s a hypocritical word. One may be an artist, but we all are human beings first and each one of us has a stance—it’s called individuality. We are not made of stone or steel. If a filmmaker simply places the criminal and the victim in the same light, in the name of objectivity, it is mechanical, facile and irresponsible.

In fact, India’s Daughter spotlights the criminal, feeding sensationalism. In spite of having incredible access to all the key players of the ‘story’ coupled with the backing of broadcasters like BBC, the film loses its opportunity of becoming a remarkable documentary of our times. The knee-jerk hysteria and the resultant ban in India has indeed whetted the appetite of non- documentary viewers on the internet and beyond , assuring the film a vast viewership and an ocean of tears, but it fails to contribute to the gender justice movement and the complex debates it has unleashed. One rape every 20 minutes in this country cannot be explained as a ‘conflict’ of illiterates versus literates, the middle-class versus slum-dwellers, the English speaking versus regional language speaking, or even man versus woman, as the film implies in its convoluted way, but is intricately connected to deep-rooted patriarchy, caste inequalities, religious chauvinism, state terrorism, crony capitalism and economic oppression.

Another issue around the film that causes anguish is how the Indian players in the film’s making were cut out of the equation. Why has Udwin taken an injunction against the Indian co-director and co-producer who could have potentially stopped the film? It is high time the BBC and other international collaborators work as equal partners and not treat their Indian counterparts as ‘sweat shop’ labour. To maintain credibility, the ‘high moral ground’ these global broadcasters claim should include ethical work practices as well.

Meanwhile, a set of feminists had written to NDTV asking for the film not to be broadcast on various grounds such as a possible obstruction in the administration of justice, a possible incitement of ‘more’ violence against women, and so forth. The list actually reads like the ‘show cause’ notice we usually receive from the censor board of India before a film is ‘banned’. In a country where trials of justice often go on for decades, a film, as dissemination of information like any other journalistic report, public speech, protest, research seminar or conference, cannot be restrained on the grounds of ‘contempt of court’. Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution (2004), most of Anand Patwardhan’s films like Ram Ke Naam (1992) faced censorship by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for similar reasons, but the films only enhanced the voice of justice. The acclaimed documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988) by Errol Morris is an excellent example of how a documentary filmmaker deals with the story of a man on death row and completely turns the case around.

People commit crimes because they are criminally predisposed, not because they watched a film. If feminists want to ‘reasonably restrict’ the film based on their own opinions of it, they need to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the audience reactions. Everybody is entitled to have a different opinion of it. I may not ‘like’ the film, but I should not restrain it. Those who have different views on the film should hold a public debate and discuss it, but cannot demand a temporary or permanent restraint on its broadcast.

I only hope this heat and sound against the ban on India’s Daughter extends to the long-drawn struggle of independent Indian filmmakers against censorship. Personally, I had to run from pillar to post in the corridors of power for a clear certification of my ‘banned’ film Sengadal/ The Dead Sea (2011) that spoke about fishermen and refugee lives at the Indo-Sri Lankan coastal border. I finally secured an ‘A’ certificate without any cuts, which ultimately meant suicide as it could not be broadcast since Indian TV channels need a ‘U’ certificate. If that is the case, did India’s Daughter have a ‘U’ certificate for it to be telecast on NDTV as advertised? If so, on what basis can the Government ban its broadcast? Film certification costs money, stress and lawsuits, and for filmmakers like us, what is such a certificate’s relevance if the Government, goons and the police can overrule it? Do we really need a body like the CBFC that has a reputation of being a tent of political buffoonery in the name of committees appointed by ruling parties and corruption fuelled by the populist cinema mafia?

All I can emphasise is, we should fearlessly walk the minefield of these important and uncomfortable questions and strengthen the solidarity between the struggle for gender justice and that for freedom of expression. In dark times where spaces of dissent are hijacked by right-wing forces that get their knickers up in a bunch, let us continue to dare the devil.

About The Author

Leena Manimekalai

Leena Manimekalai is an award winning filmmaker and a poet based in Chennai. She can be reached at leenamanimekalai @gmail.com