India's Daughter
India's Daughter is a documentary film directed by Leslee Udwin and is part of the BBC's ongoing Storyville series.
[4][5] The documentary explores the events of the night of 16 December 2012, the protests which were sparked both nationally and internationally as a result of the assault, and the lives of the men before they committed the attack.
However, when excerpts of the film, which included an interview with Mukesh Singh, one of the four men convicted of the rape and murder, were broadcast, a court stay order prohibiting the telecast was obtained by the Indian police.
The victim, Jyoti Singh, watched the film Life of Pi with a male friend, Awindra Pratap Pandey,[11] after which they boarded a privately run bus to return home.
She received emergency treatment including several surgeries in India and Singapore but died on 29 December 2012 due to the serious nature of the injuries she sustained in the assault.
[29] As a filmmaker and Human Rights Activist, Leslee Udwin's interest in making the film was sparked initially by the enormous numbers of people who protested in India for over a month in response to the rape of Jyoti Singh.
She was adamant that the documentary must involve interviews with the rapists from the attack and originally focused her attention exclusively on the rape of Jyoti Singh, a stance which later broadened.
[30][31] To begin with Udwin wrote to the director general of Tihar Jail asking for permission to interview Jyoti Singh's rapists as this was to be at the heart of her documentary; she wanted to know why men raped women.
One of the rapists refused to speak to her, whilst Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta denied their involvement saying they weren't on the bus that night.
Mukesh Singh, the bus driver, readily answered Udwin's questions and for this reason his interview was included in the film.
[32] Following these interviews her interest expanded to the wider patriarchal society and the part it plays in fuelling violence towards women and rape in India.
Further interviews were cut as they were inappropriate to include; one interviewee asked for money on camera whilst the father and brother of another would not allow her to be involved in the film.
"[36] Initially, the film was set to be released on the BBC on 8 March on International Women's Day in 2015 but was banned with short notice by the Indian government due to the Indian Home Minister announcing that Leslee Udwin had failed to obtain permission to interview one of the criminals in prison or allow authorities to view versions of the interview that had not yet been cut.
[41] The movement that followed this film's release meant that Jyoti Singh became a 'symbol' of the drive for the change in injustices of violence against women.
[37] During its release, Meryl Streep was amongst the public figures who rallied behind India's Daughter, attending multiple screenings of the film, including one at the World Congress on Family Law and Children's Rights.
[42] Then U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Stéphane Dujarric stated on 5 March, "I'm not going to comment on the unspeakable comments that were made by the person accused of raping this girl, but I think the secretary-general has spoken very clearly on the need to halt violence against women and on the need for men to get involved in halting violence against women and decrying it loud and clear every time it occurs.
[44] Bollywood figures including Anushka Sharma, Abhishek Kapoor, Sonal Chauhan, Twinkle Khanna and Punit Malhotra condemned the ban on the same day.
[50][51] Christopher Booker, columnist for The Telegraph, said that by leaving out comparison to the number of rapes in other countries that previews of the documentary reportedly included, the film reinforced the stereotype of Indian men as sexual predators to an exceptional degree.
[citation needed] Freida Pinto used her social media outreach for action on Twitter to target Prime Minister of India.
[54] The Guardian are amongst some of the positive reviews that India's Daughter acclaimed, describing the film as 'essential viewing' and notes how Leslee Udwin juxtaposes the 'light' of Jyoti Singh with the 'darkness' of depiction of the rapists.
[68][69] The Deputy Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing) of New Delhi, Rajneesh Garg said, "These excerpts of the interview as published are highly offensive and have already created a situation of tension and fear among women in society.
The film's director, Leslee Udwin, appealed to the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to lift the ban in India on 4 March 2015.
[75] On 6 March the Bar Council of India sent a show cause notice to the two lawyers, M. L. Sharma and A. P. Singh, who had made misogynistic statements in the documentary.
[77][78] On 7 March Najma Heptullah, the Minority Affairs Minister, blamed the previous UPA government for allowing the film to be made.
[81] An email posted on Quora, which showed a German professor of Leipzig University rejecting an Indian male student's internship because of the "rape problem in India", went viral.
