New Delhi : British Oscar award winning film-maker Leslee Udwin’s documentary, ‘India’s daughter,’ based on Nirbhaya, the December 16, 2012, gang rape victim, is being hotly debated in the national Capital.
But the 57-year-old-lady, who took two years leave of absence from her husband and teenage daughter and son, to travel back and forth between Britain and India, is unfazed by the controversy arising out of her interview with the rape convicts and news stories questioning requisite permissions from India’s Home Ministry and the high security prison Tihar, where she interviewed the three persons convicted in the Nirbhaya rape case and four other rape convicts.
The obnoxious remarks of Mukesh Singh, one of the convicts in the Nirbhaya case, have rekindled public anger that had ignited protests in Delhi’s streets two years ago. Asked why she gave the rapists a chance to have a say, the film maker said, “I personally have been raped and for the first time in my life, I am speaking out. There is no point in hiding our pain and doing nothing about it. There is no point in not speaking out.’’
Sharing her experience after the interviews, Leslee said that she was expecting to see deranged psychopaths and monsters when she met the convicts in the Nirbhaya case. “But what surprised me was that they were very unremarkably ordinary men who subscribed to fixed notions and attitudes about women.
It is very hard to be eloquent to describe that feeling but I felt a pity and grief for the world.”
Leslee argues that rape, honour killings and trafficking are not the disease. They are manifestations of a disease. “My message to the world is that this is not an India problem; we have to take the problem of gender inequality by the horn and put it to rest once and for all. Where I come from, I feel totally unrepresented in Parliament. In my country, one out of three girls between the age 13 and 17 have experienced sexual violence.”
Replying to questions about her meeting with rape convicts in the Nirbahaya case, Leslie reported that the interviews, which clocked 31 hours, gave her an insight into the minds of rapists. “Not for one second out of the 16 hours that I talked to Mukesh Singh did he express any remorse. I read out to him a list of injuries that Nirbhaya had suffered but he just did not flinch. It was just like he was hearing numbers out of a telephone directory. He just does not understand what wrong he did. He thinks everybody is doing it. He behaves in a robotic manner where he is conditioned by society to believe that a woman has no value and men can treat women as second class citizens.”
Explaining the purpose of the documentary at a media interaction in New Delhi, Leslee, a feature film producer, said, “I came here because I saw the protestors – men and women in unprecedented numbers — come out on the streets day after day fighting for my rights. This film is my gift of gratitude to India which has led the world by example in standing up the way it has after the incident.”
‘‘This is the first documentary I have made. It is a simple and straightforward film designed to see change. And it is already leading to change. It is inspiring people to redress injustice.
“ I hope that in ten years we will look back and say that all the debate that has come out of the shock and pain of the film led to a world movement against gender inequality. “
Leslee says that Nirbhaya’s “extraordinary” parents watched the film with her with quiet and dignity without any reaction. Her father summed up his appreciation of the film by saying, “Achcha, bahut achcha.”
An India UK production, the documentary will be premiered in India on March 8 (International Women’s Day) at 9 pm on NDTV and simultaneously in Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland . The film has been co produced by Dibang, a well known television journalist.
The film has three versions — the international version is of 57 minutes, the festival version of 62 minutes and the BBC version is of 59 and a half minutes.
