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

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.