Rape film touches a raw nerve

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The cry of a young woman who fought back a gang of sexual predators in a Delhi bus on a cold night two years ago is reverberating throughout the world again, thanks to an hour-long documentary.

News reports of the gangrape outrage in India prompted Leslee Udwin, maker of the award-winning British film East is East, which deals with the life of South Asian immigrants in London, to confront her own past. A rape survivor, she had kept her teenage experience a secret and harboured a sense of guilt for decades. She came to India to find an answer to the question why men rape. The documentary, “India’s Daughter”, is the result of her effort.

The film was to be released on BBC 4 and the Indian channel NDTV 24x7 and shown at various other countries on March 8, International Women’s Day. Clips from the documentary and news reports about its contents alarmed the Narendra Modi government, which is already having an image problem. A commercial rival of NDTV launched a virulent campaign against the documentary, and the government, in a kneejerk response, banned the documentary without even seeing it.

On a plea by the government, a Delhi court issued an injunction restraining channels and websites from showing the film, also without seeing it. The BBC responded by telecasting the documentary immediately. Within minutes it was on YouTube too.

Bowing to the Delhi court order and BBC’s copyright claim, YouTube blocked the film but it kept reappearing as intrepid Netizens kept posting it again and again.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh asked the External Affairs Ministry to alert Indian missions abroad to prevent the exhibition of the film in other countries. Few foreign governments obliged.

As it happened, the government could scuttle only the NDTV telecast. The channel left the screen blank during the hour set for the telecast.  

The documentary divided Indian political parties and civil society.  The government described the documentary as part of an attempt to tarnish India’s image. It said the interviews with the accused and their lawyers included in it were objectionable as the legal processes in the rape case were still not over.

Kavita Krishnan, Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association, who is one of the persons Leslee Udwin interviewed for the film, rejected the government’s arguments for banning the film but said it did not address the problem of rape culture. A group of women activists, led by well-known lawyer Indira Jaising, while opposing the ban, wanted its screening to be delayed until the legal processes are completed.

The public outrage over the gangrape had forced the government to refer the case to a fast-track court. Within nine months of the crime, four accused were sentenced to death. This was a record in rape trials. The high court disposed of the convicts’ appeals in just six months, which, too, was a record.

Fast-tracking ended there. The convicts’ appeals against the high court judgement confirming the death sentence have been pending before the Supreme Court now for a year.

The argument that telecast of the film before completion of the legal processes may prejudice the rights of the victim and the convicts is based on a sound principle. However, it is disingenuous to suggest that it may influence the Supreme Court, which has stated that pendency of a matter is no bar on intellectual debate.

The anti-women statements of Mukesh Singh, an unrepentant convict, and ML Sharma and AP Singh, the defence lawyers, in the documentary touched a raw nerve. All three blamed the victim for her tragic end. Singh said on camera that he would burn his daughter alive if she had sex outside marriage.

The Bar Council of India has asked Sharma and Singh to show cause within three weeks why disciplinary action should not be taken against them for their misogynistic remarks.

Official statistics show that sex crimes are on the rise and the state is failing to send the culprits to jail. Rape cases in Delhi shot up from 706 in 2012 to 1,646 in 2013 and more than 1,789 in 2014, molestation cases from 727 to 3,515 and to more than 3,674, and lewd taunt cases from 236 to 916 and to more than 1,092. Courts returned a guilty verdict only in 6,892 of the 25,386 rape cases decided in India in 2013.

“Our heads hang in shame,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a Women’s Day speech. That statement explains the government’s ham-handed efforts to ban the documentary.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 10, 2015

Western media's doublethink on crimes against women

Reproduced below (in italics) is a message I received today from a former media colleague, who is now working abroad, in the context of the controversy generated by the BBC documentary ‘India’s Daughter’:

Look at it from the perspective of global media. Why wouldn't the BBC do a similar interview with a British rapist? One of these men could be fitting subject: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11443868/300-victims-groomed-and-assaulted-by-Oxfordshire-gangs-report-finds.html
Or they wouldn't have to go far for this: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/30/bbc-staff-child-sex-abuse-allegations

They could go the US and do an interview with a college rapist. The most dangerous place for a woman is not the streets of Delhi, but US college campuses. One in five women students are raped during their college career. http://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/campus-sexual-assault-stats

When US media -- and activists -- denounce India as a society of violence towards women, what they are trying to do is divert attention away from the US situation to India (and make themselves feel better by venting against Indians). After all, the college rapists are not hoodlums from the ghettos, but the brothers, sons, nephews and cousins of the media and social elite and their friends and house guests. Would they, in any case, want to taint with a broad brush the student population made up of people like their own.

Street harassment of women is quite widespread in the US, too. http://www.npr.org/2014/11/01/360494480/woman-in-street-harassment-video-i-do-not-feel-safe-right-now
But does the western media treat it the way they do harassment in India?

And US politicians? Todd Aiken, a US Congressman said there are legitimate rapes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/08/19/todd-akin-gop-senate-candidate-legitimate-rape-rarely-causes-pregnancy/

Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate, said that rape and rape-induced pregnancies are part of God's (I presume he means the Abrahamic God) plan.

(No, they didn't belong to an Indian Khap Panchayat but were members of a mainstream US party -- not even on the fringe, but with wide party base.)

Indian media and civil society have done an excellent job of covering and violence against women in their society. Can that be said of the US media and civil society -- if you compare them to their attitudes towards similar problems in the US and in India, and how they and Indian media cover and condemn the issues in their respective countries.

When was the last time an Indian newspaper wrote a caustic editorial on rapes on US campuses or British rapes of children?

I am not denying the problems and in no way suggesting that they be hushed up -- the very active Indian media and civil society do an excellent job. I can't but notice, though, that western media is just trying to avoid criticizing their own by turning attention away from them. They don't need to raise conscience on this, when Indian society is doing a better job.

I am fully in agreement with my friend’s assessment that the Indian media has a better record of addressing the issue of crimes against women than its western counterparts. That, however, should not blind us to the fact Indian society is far more impervious to the idea of gender equality than western societies.

I have no hesitation to admit that, in my judgment, there is a good side to western media intrusions like ‘India’s Daughter’, whatever their motive. It is that they often handle the issue more professionally than our media.

As for the western media’s tendency to ignore similar developments in their own countries, the answer is to develop non-western international media institutions which will, hopefully, redress the imbalance. 

The chart below shows that the national outrage of December 2012 did not lead to a fall in the incidence of sex crimes in Delhi. On the contrary it shot up. 

Obviously we needed to be reminded of that horrendous crime, and the unchanged mindset of the criminals and their political and legal defenders. The BBC documentary has done that.  

Doublethink on women's security

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

In the two-and-a-half months since the Delhi gangrape of December 16, which shocked the nation, 65 rape cases have been reported from the national capital — an average of 26 in a month. This points to a fall in the incidence of rape as 568 cases — a monthly average of more than 47 — were reported in 2011, the last full year for which figures are available.

However, there is no room for complacency. Memories of the brutal gangrape are still fresh in people’s minds. A firm conclusion about its impact can only be drawn after watching the trend over a long period.

Meanwhile there are some disturbing signs. Many of the victims are minor girls. Last week a seven-year-old was assaulted in her school in New Delhi. Also, the government appears to have lost the sense of urgency which it displayed when people incensed by the gangrape were protesting in the streets. Its approach is marked by doublethink.

The situation calls for steps to alter the mindset which treats women as lesser citizens, but the government focuses on populist measures hoping for electoral dividends. In the wake of the gangrape, some sections had demanded that sex offenders be given capital punishment. The commission headed by former Chief Justice JS Verma, which was asked to recommend measures to ensure women’s security, did not favour it. However, the government provided for the extreme penalty through an ordinance, believing the demand has popular support.

In the budget presented to Parliament last week, Finance Minister P Chidambaram proposed the creation of a fund for women’s security and the setting up of an all-women public sector bank. He set apart Rs10 billion for each. Details are lacking because the proposals were put in at the last moment.

Some commercial banks have experimented with all-women branches but an entire bank exclusively for women is a novel idea. Criticising the proposal, Surjit Bhalla, an economist, said, “It’s the worst idea I have seen anywhere, and in any budget.” Chanda Kochhar, CEO of ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private sector bank, differed. “The proposed bank is for women,” she said. “The focus seems to be to fund women entrepreneurs and give them encouragement. And if it is an all-women bank, it’s going to be very efficient.”

Justice Verma saw the bank proposal as one of tokenism. “Such tokenism will not deliver if it is not backed by a complete change in mindset, both in government and in civil society as a whole,” he said.

The political leadership’s preoccupation with populist ideas to the exclusion of core aspects of women’s security stems from its ambivalent attitude. While committed to equality of sexes, it is weighed down by paternalistic traditions and is unable to ensure gender justice.

While making a statement in Parliament last week on the rape and murder of three minor girls in Maharashtra, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde mentioned their names in utter disregard of the law which prohibits identification of sex crime victims. When opposition members drew attention to the impropriety, he withdrew the statement and the chairman ordered that the names be expunged from the records.

Ministers make statements in parliament on the basis of drafts prepared by senior officials. The inclusion of impermissible information in Shinde’s statement indicates lack of sensitivity and respect for legal provisions in the Home Minister’s office.

As many as 162 of the 552 members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, had declared in affidavits filed at the time of the elections that they were facing various criminal charges. The charges against some of them included rape, molestation and other crimes against women.

Among the politicians hauled up in connection with crimes against women across the country is a former Haryana minister, Gopal Goyal Kanda, who has been charged with abetting the suicide of an airhostess.

Often powerful politicians escape prosecution. The names of two Kerala leaders, PJ Kurien, currently deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, and PK Kunhalikutty, a senior minister of the state government, have come up repeatedly during the past one-and-a-half decades in cases of rape of minor girls. The investigators kept them out of the lists of accused claiming lack of evidence. However, material casting doubts on their version continue to surface from time to time. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 5, 2013.

Limits of sporadic protests

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Concerned citizens who came out to protest as the government dilly-dallied on critical issues during the past two years have gone back, and the political class is back at its old game.

In the last few years, across India people have staged myriad protests against the central and state governments’ policies and failings but their voices rarely went beyond their towns and villages.

Two issues, corruption and women’s security, developed into national causes and unnerved politicians as the capital was the epicentre of protests, and the tremors they set in motion reached urban centres throughout the country.

One of them was the anti-corruption movement initiated by Anna Hazare, a social activist of Maharashtra. India Against Corruption, a civil society group led by rights activist Arvind Kejriwal, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former police officer Kiran Bedi, mobilised support for it. Large crowds turned up at the venue of the fasts Hazare undertook on the issue in New Delhi.

The movement forced the central government to rush through the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, a bill which had been in cold storage for several decades. The bill got stalled in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, which set up a select committee to go through it and suggest changes.

Last week the government revised the bill in the light of the select committee report. While accepting several recommendations of the committee, it has rejected the proposal to vest in the Lokpal, the proposed ombudsman, the power to transfer officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation. It has also turned down the suggestion that officials facing Lokpal probe should not be heard at the preliminary stage of inquiry.

Anna Hazare has expressed disappointment with its provisions of the bill and accused the government of going back on the commitments made to him. “This government is incapable of making good laws,” he says.

However, Kiran Bedi has welcomed the measure. Whatever its faults, with its passage, at least some anti-corruption mechanism will be in place, she points out.

Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan recently broke away from Hazare to float a political party, arguing it is necessary to enter the electoral arena to make a difference to the situation.

Team Anna having split, the government does not see any threat of a new movement. However, in the absence of a clear majority for the ruling United Progressive Alliance in either house of Parliament, it is not possible to say if the bill will pass master and if so in what form.

Since the bill will emerge from the Rajya Sabha in a form different from what the Lok Sabha adopted it will have to go back to that house. If the Lok Sabha does not approve of the changes made by the Rajya Sabha, the two houses will have to hold a joint sitting to vote on it.

Women’s security emerged as a major issue after a 23-year-old paramedical student was gangraped and brutally assaulted in a Delhi bus on the night of December 16. She died a few days later in a hospital in Singapore, where she was sent at government expense for treatment.

Responding to waves of protest in Delhi and elsewhere demanding stern measures to check gender violence, the government appointed a three-member committee headed by JS Verma, a former chief justice of India, to recommend measures to deal with rising sexual offences.

The committee earned all-round praise by hearing the views of all sections of opinion and coming up with a comprehensive set of proposals within a month. Justice Verma asked the government to match the panel’s commitment by implementing its recommendations immediately. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wrote back: “I assure you that we will be prompt in pursuing the recommendations of the committee.”

The government acted fast but not fairly. With no protesters in the streets to put pressure, it felt free to take liberties with the panel’s report. It ignored the suggestion to make marital rape an offence. It also overlooked the recommendation to review the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which protect rapist soldiers.

The government sugarcoated the rejection of important recommendations by promulgating an ordinance, instead of going to parliament with a bill, and including in it a provision for the death penalty, which many groups had sought but was not favoured by the Verma panel.

The government’s response to the two agitations shows sporadic protests are not an adequate substitute for sustained civil society action.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 5, 2013.

Attitude towards tragedy: A tale of two democracies

Exclusive to The Gulf Today BRP Bhaskar Gulf Today As the year 2012 ended, millions of Indians were mourning a young woman whom few of them ever saw. They knew neither her name nor what she looked like. Yet they had accepted her as a sister or daughter in distress and prayed for her — alas, in vain — as she bravely battled with death after being gangraped and brutalised in a bus in New Delhi. Doctors at the hospital where she was first admitted said they had never seen a patient in such battered condition before. Her valiant struggle against heavy odds won headlines on news channels and newspapers for days together, but the media kept her name out even when it became known, with scrupulous regard for the law that prohibits identification of rape victims. Even without a face and a name, she came to symbolise Indian women seeking a just place in the society. As people identified themselves with her, the state was gripped by a siege mentality. The gangrape took place immediately after the United States was shaken by the shootout at Newtown, Connecticut, where a man killed his mother and then went to the elementary school where she taught and mowed down six other teachers and 20 children. Both were senseless crimes, and united the people in grief — and possibly anger and shame too. The similarities end there. One occurred in the nation’s capital, the other in a small town with barely 500 families. One was a sex crime, the other a massacre. The starkest contrast, however, lay in the way administrations in the two countries responded to the tragedy. One was open and empathetic, the other was secretive and betrayed a sense of guilt. Within hours of the shootout the White House said President Barack Obama, as a father, felt enormous sympathy for the affected families. He told the Governor of Connecticut he would have every single resource that he needed to investigate the heinous crime, care for the victims, and counsel their families. He was seen fighting back tears as he addressed the nation. Obama visited Newtown within three days, met the victims’ families privately and spoke at a candlelight vigil in the school where teachers and children were killed. He ordered that flags be flown at half-mast, and a day of national mourning was designated. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not associate himself with the popular sentiments as protests continued for several days and the police kept pushing the demonstrators away from New Delhi’s Central Vista where the president’s mansion, Parliament House, the Secretariat and major government departments are located. When he spoke, it was too late and too little. The police in the capital is directly under the central government, and outside the control of the Delhi state government. The chief minister, who belongs to the Congress, disapproved of the police’s handling of the protests. When Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde spoke, it was mainly to defend the police conduct. The protest was largely peaceful but small groups did attempt to break the police cordon. A policeman collapsed at the protest site and died in a hospital later. The government said protesters had beaten him up but its version was disputed by an eyewitness who had provided the cop first aid. The rape victim died in a hospital in Singapore, where she was flown in an air ambulance secretly in a move which many doctors believe was taken on other than medical grounds. Her body was flown to Delhi at night and cremated early in the morning. Police barred access to the place to all except her close relatives. The prime minister and Congress President Sonia Gandhi were at the airport to receive the body but there was no official mourning. The media is trying to use the heightened awareness of gender issues, generated by the tragedy, to push for some long-delayed laws. The real problem, however, is not absence of laws but lack of enforcement. The nation gives the appearance of going through a process of catharsis, but so far there is no sign of the public outcry and media glare making a difference to the ground situation. Politicians continue to make sexist remarks, and crimes against women continue to be reported daily.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 1, 2013.

Turning outrage into action

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India has been in a state of rage for more than a week over the gangrape of a young woman in a New Delhi bus she had boarded with a male friend. In the national capital, young people have been staging demonstrations daily and the government is clearly worried.

Gruesome acts of sex crime often provoke angry responses and political parties use the opportunity to their advantage. However, the sense of outrage soon dies down and all is forgotten — until another case brings the issue to the fore again.

The wave of protests in the nerve centre of the central government, which has produced echoes across the country, marks a determined effort by youths to turn the outrage into action. Their demand is that the government must ensure that women are safe in the capital and elsewhere in the country. Repeated use of batons, water cannons and teargas has not deterred them.

The gangrape victim, a 23-year old paramedical student, who was brutalised and thrown out of the bus with her friend. is now in hospital, fighting for survival. Her six tormentors are in custody.

Sex crimes are universal but their incidence varies from country to country. A recent multi-country World Health Organisation study said 15% to 71% women aged 15 to 49 years had reported physical or sexual violence by someone close to them at some point in their lives. Such violence not only violates human rights but also poses major health problems, it added.

India’s record in this area is dismal. A global survey by the Thomson Reuters Trust found it the fourth most dangerous place for women, after Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan.

Crimes against women are on the rise in the country. Last year 228,650 cases were reported, as against 215,585 in 2010. The offences included murder, dowry deaths, rape and molestation. In 22,549 out of the 24,206 rape cases, the offenders were persons known to the victims such as relatives, including parents and grandparents, neighbours, friends or colleagues. Of the victims, 10.6% were aged below 14 years, 19.0% between 14 and 18 years, 54.7% between 18 and 30 years, 15.0% between 30 and 50 years and 0.6% above 50 years.

Many of the crimes against women are attributable to feudal influence. Rape of Dalit and Adivasi women and so-called “honour killing” of girls who marry outside the caste fall in this category.

The urban sex crime rate is above the national average, which suggests women are more unsafe in the modern cities than in backward villages. Delhi accounted for 13.3% of sex crimes reported from 53 cities, and was way above Bangalore which was in second place with 5.6%. A close look at the statistics reveals that cities where hoodlums enjoying political patronage abound are the most violence-prone.

The society, which is highly paternalistic, nurtures a traditional bias in favour of the male child, which manifests itself in the high incidence of female foeticide. Police officials often refuse to entertain complaints of sex abuse. When a complaint is registered, investigation may be shoddy. Even judges of the highest court sometimes betray lack of sensitivity in handling such cases.

Instead of improving, things are getting worse. Conviction rate in sex crimes has dropped from 43% to just above 20% in the last 40 years. The youth fury in Delhi is a sign of exasperation with the failure of the legal and political systems.

Some political leaders have sought to placate the public with calls for the death penalty and castration of sex offenders. Their words lack sincerity. Their own parties have MPs and MLAs involved in cases of sexual offence. As many as 34 candidates who contested the last parliamentary elections were facing charges of crime against women. They included nominees of West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress and Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, both which are headed by feisty women.

The Kerala government last week set up a panel headed by a senior woman police officer to supervise investigation of crimes against women. Commendable as the step is, it is worthwhile to remember that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Senior leaders of both ruling and opposition parties in the state who figured in cases of sex offences in the past have got away without even facing trial.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 25, 2012.