India's Daughter.

On 16th December, 2012, 23 year old Jyoti Singh was returning home with a friend after watching a movie. They hailed an off duty bus where six men, including the driver, raped and assaulted Jyoti, leading to her death on 29th December. As details of the inhuman attack came to light, the whole nation came together to show solidarity with ‘Nirbhaya’ and protest the pathetic state of women’s safety.

Leslee Udwin’s polemic documentary, India’s Daughter (2015), has sparked an outrage within India and the diaspora community worldwide. The act of the Delhi court banning the film from theatres, television and even media channels such as YouTube, led the award-winning filmmaker to flee India, appealing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lift the ban on the film.

The multiple voices that are interweaved together help to build the narrative of the film, making the piece well-rounded. As a viewer, I got to listen to the voices of not just the families of the victim (Jyoti Singh) but also the rapists, their families, defence lawyers, police commissioners, protestors, scholars, and the powerful women who hold strong political positions within India as political leaders and activists. Udwin's film has been accused of being a platform for allowing one of the convicted rapists (Mukesh Singh) to speak, but I would argue that his voice is perhaps one of the most essential to understand the varied "mentalities" that exist in India, in the different social strata of the Indian society.

The film has also been criticized for being made by a "foreign" filmmaker (a non-Indian), which reminds me of an early 19th century controversy, which was a result of Katherine Mayo's polemic book Mother India (1927).  Mayo, who was an American researcher and historian, made headlines for pointing out the ill-treatment of Indian women and accused the weak sexuality of Indian males that leads to rape and other social issues. The outrage led to the burning of her effigy and eventually, the making of the Oscar-winning film, Mother India (1957), starring Nargis who was portrayed as an all-encompassing ideology of the Indian woman, holding characteristics and mannerisms such as modesty, self-sacrifice and a good mother to name a few, which defined her as the woman to represent the country.

Interestingly and along the same vein is Leslee Udwin's India's Daughter (2015). Udwin's documentary also comes at a time when films like Rang De Basanti (2006) - which illustrated a British woman coming to India to explore her grandfather's roots in colonialism - engaged with a group of Indian men to raise political conscientious. In an interview with NDTV, Udwin confesses she is also a rape victim, establishing 'India's Daughter' as a passion project close to her heart. Reportedly she made the film to explore the current social issue of women in India, and in my opinion, made a successful hour-long documentary which stood as a reminder of the importance of the 2012 rape case, which has become a seminal moment in Indian history.

Many in India question if her ethnicity affects her view of the film - the "us vs them" mentality. If you read Facebook and online article comments it's prevalent, but I would suggest that she is not like Katherine Mayo, whose book made stereotypical and generalized assumptions about the Indian culture and women. Udwin's film instead, shows the effects in the aftermath of rape. There is a heart-wrenching moment in the film, when one of the wives of the alleged rapists, Akshay Thakur, feels alone with a small child living in a village in Bihar, crying and begging for the return of her husband. As a woman it's hard not to sympathize with her, but then I found myself thinking "well if your husband had not raped..." but this is exactly the beauty of the film. While there are erudite voices that are speaking to the rape situation in India, Udwin's film also showcases ambiguous moments where the viewer is left with even more questions than answers about the rape epidemic in India. There is another moment when one of the protestors, Usha Saxena, mentions that her husband called her "stupid" for joining in the protests, which is again a reminder that a woman's freedom in India is still in question before and after she gets married.The irony is that despite protests, rape continues to be a prevalent issue within India.

Udwin's documentary, I would contend, breaks the much-needed silence to encourage Indians - not just within India - but all around the world to rethink the status of women's rights in the country because in many ways, even today, women do represent the nation and its honour - an ideology that has been present since 1947 when India became independent. Indian women over the decades have been silenced in order to save the honour of the country, but by banning the film, rape is being silenced again and again revealing the issues that are inherent within India. During the course of the Partition, if women were raped by the men of the other community, they were rejected from their natal homes, committed suicides, or were forced to adapt the cultures and customs of the men from other communities. Women's rights since then, have definitely improved. Look at Jyoti's family - a father who passionately supported her dreams and even put his ancestral land on collateral so that he could fund his daughter's education. But at the same time, Jyoti who was out with a man on a date was subsequently punished for being a modern woman.

Udwin's documentary reveals that Indian values and traditions cannot be locked into a singular or monolithic understanding of the culture. We live in a globalized world, where cultures and customs are exchanged and adapted. This is at the heart of the documentary, making it powerful and unforgettable, and perhaps the reason why it is banned. The fear of bringing shame on the Motherland. I believe it's a reality which we cannot escape. We should embrace this reality and work to bring changes to the society in a way that preserves "traditions" but allows women to grow.

The documentary also speaks of the emotional and psychological struggles that women face as they try to retain their traditional values while trying to adapt to modern expectations. Jyoti Singh, the girl who was brutally raped and murdered on December 12, 2012, is arguably the symbol of the new women of India. Singh was born to a poor but modern family. Both her parents chose to treat her with equality and helped her to pursue her dreams to become a medical student so that she could financially support her family.

Dr. Maria Misra, a historian and scholar at the University of Oxford, makes a salient point in Udwin's documentary. She remarks that Jyoti Singh categorically belonged to a group of young, single women who represented “symbols of new aspiration” as a result of the transforming economy. India's transformation has created opportunities for young, single women to work and raises expectations across a range of classes of young women about how they should be allowed to live their lives. Due to shifting gender roles in India’s economy, women now have more professional opportunities than before. Economic changes also effect social and political changes inadvertently. And as a result, there's a new bourgeoning cosmopolitan class of men and women who have adopted western lifestyles. This phenomenon is not new, but more apparent with the rise of social media.

Udwin’s documentary also showcases the voices of politically powerful women such as Sheila Dikshit, former Chief Minister of India, British scholar and historian Dr. Maria Misra, Kavita Krishnan, secretary of All India Progressive Women’s Association, and Leila Seth, Former Chief Justice and member of the Rape Review Committee. As a foil, we hear from Jyoti Singh’s mother as well as the rapists’ mothers and wives, who continue to live in economic disparity. By having these women speak together and offer their comments, we're able to see how women in power are working to understand the situation for young women in India today. By having the voices of the women who are in a politically powerful situation contrasted with women who are living in poverty, demonstrates the rich and complex culture of the country. Before we can work to understand why sexual violence occurs predominantly against women, we need to understand and accept the society's multi-layered diverse culture which is interwoven with caste and class, playing a role in defining a woman's position within the society. Jyoti Singh was the woman of today, aspiring to reach higher goals to become part of the rising middle class in India. Unfortunately for her, this also led her to be in a precarious position, making her vulnerable to the lesser male.

To sum up, Udwin's documentary is a must watch. The film sends the message that as young women aspire to become the "new" women of the 21st century, their rights to live their lives the way they choose is limited because of political, emotional, and psychological tensions that continue to exist between the "traditional" and "modern/cosmopolitan" India. The documentary also touches on the fact that an Indian woman's role is already defined. Before they are born they already viewed as sexual objects with limited rights and as well as voice. Udwin's message throughout the documentary is that the society needs to understand and accept that if a woman is free, independent, and open-minded, it does not mean that is sexually available and she should not be silenced or punished by rape. Jyoti Singh should be viewed as an example. As her father concludes at the end of the film, 'as a girl who followed her dreams, stood up for her rights, and is a model for young women who should protest and demand respect?' Her actions that night were not morally reprehensible or a moral crime, she should not have been punished. If a girl chooses to be striving to be better, have the means to provide her family with economic and class mobility, so be it, she can and she should.