Radha Bedi's India: A Dangerous Place To Be A Woman was released during the summer. Produced by BBC, the cameras followed Radha's journey to India and documented interviews with family members, lawyer, victims, and the father of Jyoti - the 2012 Delhi Rape case victim. Bedi's documentary was endearing, emotional, and traumatic. I do want to warn the viewers to be aware that the documentary has very troubling images and can trigger emotions to be vary of it while watching this documentary. Bedi is a British-Indian broadcast and journalist who belongs to a multicultural background in England. She is a third-generation British Indian who has grown up mostly in Belfast and she was educated at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMBDA).
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| Bedi in India via Timeout.com |
Recommended to watch this documentary by a good friend, I embarked upon the one-hour journey with her and came across many glaring issues that I have been dealing with not only of my own experiences when I have traveled to India, but also her project raised many issues that take us back to the time of the Partition and earlier. Particularly, I am referring to well-known Partition scholar, Ritu Menon's edited No Woman's Land: Women from Pakistan, India, & Bangladesh write on the Partition on India. The documentary touched on topics I am familiar with and have been working on since the time of my high school days - "harmless" eve-teasing, acid attacks, dowry deaths, female infantilization and now and much more magnified on international media - gang rapes. Bedi started her journey in Delhi and traveled to Assam and Punjab throughout the duration of her documentary. She recollected the horrific memories of the assaults she had experienced, interviewed a 15-year-old survivor of acid attack (her only crime was that she had refused to say yes or give attention to her friend who was enamored by her), and even comes face to face with Jyoti's heartbroken father who couldn't even express his love for her when she took her last breath.
Bedi suggests in her documentary that these violent crimes are a result of the status which women have in India. She argues that because of problematic practices and cultural rejection of girls - women are seen as burdens to their families. She draws on stories of women from both upper and lower classes highlighting that the issue is not class-caste specific but something inherent within the Indian society.
I write this blog from a site of privilege (similar to her standpoint). I was born into a well-to-do family, where I have been lucky that my birth after 18 years was celebrated - my baby pictures found in relative's home whom I had not met since I was a year or two. I have dealt personally with many of the issues mentioned in the documentary but never to the extent that the stories that the documentary conveyed.Unlike Bedi's relatives who celebrated the birth of boys in the families and cried at the birth of daughters, I was warmly received into my family and loved by my immediate and extended family. Bedi herself concluded that she took the life of equality she had growing up as a Diaspora Indian-British woman was something she could never take for granted after the violence she saw in her one month journey into the dark crevices of India during the filming of the documentary. I was not satisfied with Bedi's conclusions and feel that there is more to the story than even what she told in this documentary. I can also never speak for the victims or women of India. I speak as a diaspora American-Indian who is coming to terms with her country especially her nation's capital being called the "Shame capital". It is this blackening of my country's capital that drives me to do the research I do today. This is the reason I wake up to everyday and makes my life worthwhile and meaningful.
Yes, women are vulnerable in India but what can we, as individuals, do to support them? How can we change the mindsets of a society so steeped in patriarchal values that values men over women on a daily basis. Is India really a No Woman's Land?
According to the representative of UN Women in India, Sabrina Sidhu who tells Radha, "We did a study in Delhi. 95% of women in India are scared to go out. Our study also showed that 2 in 3 men interviewed felt that the dress that women wore provoked them." She continues, "Men want to be in control. They want to be in power. In your families, when boys grow into men, they see how the mothers and sisters are treated, right? What value is put on their education, on their mobility, etc and then they go ahead and do exactly that with their wives and daughters. Through their life cycle, they are being discriminated at every stage. Until these mindsets change, rapes, molestation and harassment will continue to happen. What's really clear and urgent - we need to value women equally?"
Sidhu makes a very salient point - mindsets need to change and become acceptable of women. Perhaps there are three steps that need to be taken in order to ensure a dialogue about women's subjectivity in India:
1) Since the post-liberalization period in the 1990s India, the "new" women of India have now come into being. Women are now working late in call centers and other professional positions, which would not have been possible before. They are also social drinkers, do go clubbing (though I may not practice it myself, I have no issues of other women my age do), and they are now independent thinkers who are now attempting to shape their subjectivity in a country which has been deemed to have a "shame" capital.
2) She speaks that "mindsets" should change, but its unclear what she means by "mindset"? I am being a little nit-picky but I think this should be defined and also - who's mindset? society's? families? boy's family? victim's family?
3) Many blame westernization or "modernization" as a result of the magnified increase in rape cases in India, but is it really the fear of that these changes bring to the culture (which are inevitable) Is it enough to justify the "other" for the lack of steps taken to protect and empower your own country's women? I think Sidhu hit the nail on the head when she said - we need to value women equally!
In the documentary, Bedi interviewed one of the defense lawyer of the Delhi rape case. The lawyer blamed the girl and said that she was not "respectable" and thus provoked the crime unto her. He said, "We have a different culture. Respectable girl and a non respectable girl means if you see someone if you feel respect about her, she is respectable. If she would be respectable, this will never happen to her. Respect is a very strong shield, which cannot be crossed by anyone at all. And respect comes by your character, respect comes by your behavior, respect comes by your actions, respect comes by your circumstances." Bedi questions him if he thinks Jyoti had any responsibility because she was out at the night with a boy. He responds, "She was responsible for this. You cannot say only the rapists were responsible. She is also responsible equally. And entirely the boy is responsible who put her in such circumstances and such scenario. You have to protect yourself number one. Any dog can bite you - that's happened."
The defense lawyer echoes many themes that have been continuously discussed in post colonial feminist theories. He speaks of a "respectable" woman but his definition is unclear. He also blames the victim for provoking the crime and violence unto herself - that the men who raped her are not the only ones at fault for this heinous crime.
Just this weekend, NY times released an article - Gang Rape In India, Routine and Invisible - which was a disheartening read and added more voice in an already controversy-wrought discourse on the Common Indian Male and the responses that have sprung up since the last time I wrote about this issue. The author argued:
But the Mumbai case provides an unusual glimpse into a group of bored young men who had committed the same crime often enough to develop a routine. The police say the men had committed at least five rapes in the same spot. Their casual confidence reinforces the notion that rape has been a largely invisible crime here, where convictions are infrequent and victims silently go away. Not until their arrest, at a moment when sexual violence has grabbed headlines and risen to the top of the state’s agenda, did the seriousness of the crime sink in.
The authors's argument sheds light onto another aspect of the rape culture. They suggest that not only is rape an "invisible crime" but the men or rapists who have committed the crime are a "group of bored young men" who routinely commit this crime. The writers describe the men as:
None of the men worked regularly. There were jobs chicken-plucking at a neighborhood stand — a hot, stinking eight-hour shift that paid 250 rupees, or $4. The men told their families they wanted something better, something indoors, but that thing never seemed to come. They passed time playing cards and drinking. Luxury was pressed in their faces in the sinuous form of the Lodha Bellissimo, a 48-story apartment building rising from an adjacent lot
The men who have gang-raped the victims are said to have similar profiles. Jason Burke's remarkable article on this issue described the perpetrators as:
Ram and Mukesh Singh, two brothers living in a slum known as Ravi Das Colony. The "fun", on previous occasions, had meant a little robbery to earn money for a few bottles of cheap whisky and for the roadside prostitutes who work the badly lit roads of the ragged semi-urban, semi-rural zones around the edges of the sprawling Indian capital.
Lavanya Shankaran argued, "Let me introduce the Common Indian Male, a category that deserves taxonomic recognition: committed, concerned, cautious; intellectually curious, linguistically witty; socially gregarious, endearingly awkward; quick to laugh, slow to anger. Frequently spotted in domestic circles, traveling in a family herd. He has been sighted in sari shops and handbag stores, engaged in debating his spouse’s selection with the sons and daughters who trail behind. There is, apparently, no domestic decision that is not worthy of his involvement."
Shankaran's argument released a series of article strongly disagreeing with her standpoint and her call for the idealization of the "Common Indian Male." We do not know what she means by the common Indian male still. Does she mean a Middle class man? If so, then is she speaking of lawyers like the aforementioned men who blames the victim for bringing the crime unto her. Furthermore, have we forgotten that when the crime happened, NO ONE was there for the 45 minutes when she was bleeding and was by herself and her companion. The language in the media also refrained from defining the relationship between her and her "male companion" but I strongly believe that they were a couple or dating to my knowledge.
While I enjoyed watching and was emotionally troubled by Bedi's documentary, there were many questions that the documentary sparked. Is being an empowered, vocal, opinionated, and strong woman a crime in India? Perhaps its even more basic - do women in India have inferior status? Have they always represented the honor of their communities through their silence, chastity, and sexual purity? If that's the case, then surely examples of popular culture that promote the idea that Indian women are now stronger and more empowered than is surely promulgating a misconstrued image in their films in which women have found a happy "medium" between their traditional and modern selves. Instead, even in the rhetoric discussed in the documentary and through personal experiences, the opinions seem to be contradictory. Had the 1990s liberalization not taken place or even the modernization that happened in the post-independence period not taken place, how would an Indian woman's subjectivity been shaped? There is more to the story than what we are being told and this documentary is an example of an avenue and dialogue that needs to take place to discuss this sensitive but powerful issue.
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions but a reflection of media that seeks to answer these troubling questions. A must watch!
Video Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6r8jgFxgA
Source: bbc.co.uk, huffingtonpost.co.uk, unwomensouthasia.org, nytimes.com, radhabedi.co.uk
© Nidhi Shrivastava 2014 This content is subject to copyrights. Please ask for my permission before using this content for any purpose.
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