"India’s Daughter"

The said documentary by Leslee Udwin might not have possibly been made, and then noticed, had these three reasons had not been there. First, it was being produced and directed by a white skinned British woman. So our ‘gora’ (white) complex caused the jail authorities to bend backwards on the spine, to grant permissions to the crew to record the statements of the convicts inside the jail.

Second, it was about the heinous crime in which the unfortunate girl lost her life. But more than that, it provided a platform to the convict on the death row, to tell his side of the story to the world that was too hungry to hear the real beast.

And the third, and perhaps the most important of all, the ban. Had it not been banned, it would not have gone viral on the internet. Had it not been banned, it would not have given an opportunity to the BBC to show its ‘middle finger towards the sky’ gesture to the government of India and do what it did to the ban order.

I have read many write-ups about the documentary. Most of the learned authors have been critical of it for it gives an impression of Indian society as a society infested to its seams by rapists and murderers! Many of them have given figures and questioned how it would have felt if someone made a statement like that about them? Since the logic of making the film has been criticized by many, I leave that out of here.

As a film maker, I have following to say:  It is one hour too long a documentary that seems to drag endlessly, thus it is a bad production.  A ‘Documentary’, by its very nomenclature, is a piece of research and there are certain norms that are kept in mind while making them. One of them is to inform the viewer if any portion is recreated. Even non-documentary ‘factual’ programmes make such mentions. No recreated scene is mentioned as ‘recreation’ in this film. The film also tickles other emotions when it shows the pathetic condition in which families of other convicts are living in and the statement of the mother and wife on one convict in which wife (sitting along with her infant) says that she would also kill herself and her child after the child’s father is hanged. The thought that it tickled in me was that although their crime was highly deplorable, should they not be given a chance to improve? What crime have the family members of the convicts done to see their bread earner be hanged. This thought had not occurred to me, before I saw the film. So, was this also the purpose of the film? The film, a documentary, also gives an impression that the victim girl was pursuing the medical studies to become a doctor, where as she was training to become a para-medic. This ‘documentary’ was not being made by a greenhorn into the trade whose mistakes could be overlooked; it was being made by a film maker of international repute and rewards.

To sum up, it is a bad film and it is not a real ‘documentary’. It is a film made with a purpose and it has achieved that. For the audience of this film around the world at least, INDIANS HAVE  NOW EVOLVED, EVOLVED FROM SNAKE CHARMERS INTO RAPIST AND MURDERERS. That is what the gossip of the time suggests.

my main objection is towards the filmmakers makeing a mockery of the Indian law and constitution by allowing a convict to share his views from inside the jail (how she got the permission is not my concern at the moment at least). No one has the right to challenge the Majesty of Law, not even a British citizen.