For once, let bias favour women in patriarchal India
Priya Virmani says those who exploit women must be thoroughly shamed
The controversy surrounding the BBC documentary on the 2012 gang rape of a medical student aboard a moving bus in Delhi was raging on Indian television screens on Sunday. The date coincided with International Women's Day. And, just then, the breaking-news feed running across the bottom of the screens reported that a young woman had been gang-raped in a car in the northern Indian city of Ludhiana.
The history of gang rapes is repeating itself all too often in India. Yet Home Minister Rajnath Singh remains fiercely critical of the documentary which shines an unflattering light on the connection between widespread misogyny and rape in India.
Singh, incidentally, has yet to see the documentary but, together with the political elite, is furious that the film is trying, in their opinion, to malign the image of India. Fury is often an easier and more sensationalist response than transformative action. Accordingly, the documentary has been banned in India.
In , filmmaker Leslee Udwin gives the spotlight to Mukesh Singh, one of the rapists on death row. Singh calmly and chillingly recounts the details of the rape. Showing no remorse, he narrates how the victim was bitten, brutally kicked, beaten and left to die.
Mukesh Singh's "casual" rape talk in the film is an exemplar of the unapologetic misogyny that is rampant in India. He says his victim was responsible for her rape because she was out at night. The two defence lawyers also ascribe the blame for rape to women who do not confirm to patriarchal codes.
Critics claim that is a lopsided film. It has a damning bias against the rapists and the defence lawyers, who normalise patriarchy and sexual violence in their interviews.
However, such an unforgiving bias is the need of the hour. In India, a woman is considered the repository of shame when she is raped. To redress the "shame inequity", the shaming of misogynists is necessary.
Patriarchy in India is entrenched, omnipresent, covert and overt. Myriad measures have seen little or no effect. After the Delhi gang rape, an eminent panel was put together that produced a report in a record 29 days, making recommendations to modernise India's rape laws. Yet, no meaningful change has come about. In 2011, India was named by a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll as the fourth most dangerous place for women in the world; last year, the Delhi transport system was named the fourth most dangerous for women in a poll of 16 cities.
After spending several years in Britain, last year I arrived in India to work on a humanitarian project. The misogyny I have both observed and encountered across the spectrum of society is astonishing at best and nauseating at worst. In the upper echelons, there is a covert condescension towards women with independent identities. At the grass-roots level, it is overt.
I often encounter surprise and consternation: "Pretty girls should not be doing such work. You should be married and stay at home." Worryingly, most people in India still conflate the notion of beauty with brainlessness, so a woman is innocuous to the status quo.
To the increasing peril of women who are venturing out of the house in search of work and independence, patriarchy is manifesting itself in savage ways. To challenge an ideology as rooted as patriarchy in India, the need for a bias towards the exploited sex is compelling.
For politicians, if misogynistic India is not sitting well with the narrative of "India as a superpower", their discomfort on the international stage might just push them to seek a meaningful transformation.
