A question of Perspectives--Leslee Udwin

A Question of Perspectives- Leslee Udwin

The embattled filmmaker who was embroiled in the Nirbhaya documentary controversy lives in Birmingham, UK.  When you say  “Leslee Udwin” the first thing that comes to mind is  “East is East”. An actress to begin with, after attaining fame in her work, she switched to production. A prominent personality among the NRIs and feminists in UK. Winning the  BAFTA award in 1999, was the  first turning point in her career as it was her first feature film as a producer. Leslee’s documentary  India’s Daughter,  about the case of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh (Nirbhaya), who was gang raped and murdered in Delhi in 2012 was part  of the BBC’s Storyville series and aired on channels internationally  but was banned for broadcast in India. That was the second turning point.

The documentary containing the interview of Mukesh Singh, an unrepentant criminal who was involved in the rape  invoked India’s resentment--the outrage was not just for Mukesh, but also towards the documentary for providing a platform to a criminal who showed no remorse to  Nirbhaya. Leslee’s other works includes West is West, Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution, Merchant of Venice (actress).

Crisp, candid and hard-hitting. Leslee clears the air and addresses some serious issues…….

What prompted you to pick Nirbhaya’s case as your subject?

The response to the Nirbhaya atrocity was entirely responsible for my motivation in focusing upon this case. The courage, passion, commitment, and tenacity of those extraordinary men and women of India who poured out onto the streets to cry "Enough is enough ", were so inspiring I felt I had to join these voices by giving my energy and time to amplifying them with this documentary.

 It occurred to me very strongly that no other country in my lifetime had stood up so powerfully and for so long to fight for womens’ rights, and here was India leading the world by example. I made the film to address the global issue of violence against women and inspire other countries to examine their own records and culpability in this respect. The global statistics which punctuate the end of the film do not allow any viewer off the hook - and as I  travel the world as I have done  since the 8th March, country by country, we screen the film and discuss that particular country's record and culpability.  Ironically, it is only India which sees the film as 'about India" - the rest of the world see it as a focused inquiry into global gender inequality and global violations of the human rights of women and girls. 

 A film, as I know from years of experience as a filmmaker HAS to be story specific, and that is why the Nirbhaya case was the prism through which the issue was examined. Had those admirable and amazing protests happened in any other country, in response to any other case that illustrated the widespread patriarchal culture that limits and seeks to control and, worse, violates, women the world over, I would have gone to that country and made a film about the same issue but seen through the prism of that other case...

Why did you call your documentary  India’s Daughter?

Since the victim cannot be named by Indian law, she was known in the media as "Nirbhaya", "Damini" AND "India's daughter". Since the film was always intended to engender a GLOBAL Campaign, the most universal name offered up by the Indian media here was "India's Daughter". And the case was world renowned, so calling the film by the recognisable name the media had already given to the heroic victim in this case made sense in order to ensure the widest dissemination around the world.

Outside of India no one knows what Damini or Nirbhaya mean, let alone are able to pronounce these names. So this was a very innocent and logical choice made. I have since been criticised - particularly by Indian feminists like Kavita Krishnan for using "the language of patriarchy". I think this is petty, pedantic and a distraction. And it is still surprises me that anyone who calls herself a feminist can work against a documentary that is so clearly in the public interest and in the interest of women by seeking to focus on minute criticisms to discredit the film, and, worse still, should have called for the ban, as I am reliably told the Indian feminists did. The word "daughter" is not in the ownership of patriarchy. It describes the female child of parents, and, in this case, the female child of a nation, and - by inference, the female child of the world. Others around the world get this point: Meryl Streep at the NY launch of the film on March 9th said: "We are all India's Daughters". Only some in India ( a minority, I am happy to say, who seek to reject the message of the film) have reacted with a knee-jerk reaction taking the title literally and inferring that the film sought to 'shame' India. Nothing could be further from the truth---the film sought to praise the Indian civil society movement that protested with such inspiring vigour and to shine a bright light on the abuse of the human rights of women and girls  globally-- I have just been honoured with one of the most prestigious Human Rights Awards in the world for my global work with this film for women's rights across the world.

What kind of research did you undertake?

Early research was mostly bent on identifying the protagonists of the story and case - the direct participants who would be important to interview. Compiling lists of these people, addresses where their doors could be knocked on or they could be contacted. I read everything i could find that had been written or reported about the case in the media. I sat through several hours of archive material. 

Wherever information was lacking - eg about Nirbhaya herself, I undertook research amongst those who knew her - a visit, for example, to her Physiotherapy Institute to do research with students and teachers who were with her during her 4 years of study there. Meeting her best friend, whose father and brother so control her that they refused her permission to be interviewed. Many more people were interviewed and much more material and information gathered than appears in the film. The film is 1 hour long and the filmed interview material on the journey of making the film is 87 hours long

I also interviewed other rapists and read up about theories and inquiries into why men rape and gang-rape, and generally treat women as disposal objects. And just identifying  the 150 odd questions I was to put to the 7 rapists I interviewed (4 from other cases), was in itself a major research project.

What was the message you were trying to convey?

The message of the film emerges from the participants themselves - and emerged in the editing process from insights gleaned through listening to their views and the reasons these views are held. Often documentaries have a narrator who steer the audience and 'deliver' a message- you will note that there is NO narrator in this film, and my voice is absent. Particularly because I am foreigner, and also because I believe that a true inquiry with integrity should emerge from those directly involved in the story, I was determined from the outset not to be a part of the film and not to intrude my inevitably limited grasp on the culture and ground realities surrounding the story. So the message emerges from the participants….

And what is this message?

 And the message in this film emerges with blinding clarity. If you view women as of lesser value, if women are not as welcome as boys, not deemed to be as worthy of education as boys, given half a glass of milk, controlled as to where they are allowed to go, with whom, at what time, and what they have to wear while doing so, are not deemed to be autonomous and equal in practice (whatever the constitution of the country says), then atrocities against them will take place.The film clearly shows that there are enlightened men and women who withstand this 'programming' that is thrust upon men and women by a controlling patriarchal society (Nirbhaya's parents, Leila Seth, Sheila Dixit, Satendra, Amod Kanth, Gopal Subramanium, the jail psychiatrist,...) and there are men and women who subscribe slavishly to the patriarchal notions of what a woman is and how she is to be controlled by men and is subordinate to men (the rapist, the lawyers, Akshay Thakur's wife...).

There is a personal choice to be made in any belief system. The message of the film also encompasses the following insights: 1) that the so-called educated lawyers are more shocking in their misogyny than the rapists, and therefore 'access to education' is not relevant to the kind of dehumanising thinking they engage in, quality of education (what we learn) is the problem. 2) That the rapists are not monsters or psychopaths, but ordinary 'normal' men who think as they do and feel no remorse at all because they do not really believe they have done wrong, when 'everybody's doing it", and since they have been programmed to view women a certain way. Society and what we teach men has to take responsibility for their thinking.

What kind of interaction did you have with Nirbhaya’s parents…what impressions did you gather from them about their daughter’s horrific experience and the plight of women in general?

 Her parents are still utterly grief stricken. Because they are so enlightened, their daughter was the centre of the family and the centre of their universe, even though they had 2 sons. They all relied on her totally for advice, and believed she would take care of the whole family on graduation. They are stuck in their grief without the possibility of closure, as long as the case is stuck in the courts. This was meant to be a fast-track case,  it seems  it  will take another 2-3 years to be heard there as there is such a backlog of cases.

Despite this they are dignified and wise  beyond belief. They said so many important things which didn't make it into the film because of time and focus constraints, like :"we worship the goddesses, but in the home we treat our women like footwear". Above all, they understand that their daughter's life has been sacrificed for the good of humanity and that she has become a symbol and a light which will hopefully help dispel the darkness of how women are viewed and treated in the world. The family was very generously supportive of the film and its message, though there were naturally great emotional difficulties in the long filming hours in particular. When I was in Delhi, just at the time when the shocking ban was anounced, Nirbhaya's father said to me: "When you walk the right path, there will always be thorns, and there will always be obstacles." I will always cherish these words ….

                                            US premiere

There were mixed reactions to the film--- some were very critical while others welcomed your effort…what did you learn from them?

I learned how utterly sad and disappointing it is that some people will put their own selfish concerns about their 'image' above the objective of putting human rights violations of their own women and girls first. I learned how utterly dangerous it is to make snap judgements (banning the film without having even seen it). I learned how cowardly people can be about 'stepping out of line' and demanding truth and right and justice  - though there are notable exceptions here: (Ketan Dixit and NDTV), who are heroes and exceptions in having done so nonetheless. I learnt how deep-seated and widespread resentment in India is against the British legacy of colonialism : to the extent that they will spew out the word "gorri" (as Jaya Bachchan did with such venom) But I also learned that there are exceptional and good people everywhere in India who DO want change and are willing to stand up  and call for it, and some who have been positively transformed by the film and have written to me to say so. So both negative and positive lessons.

Following the ban, did you feel that you were in that awkward intersection between feminism and patriotism or, in this case, state pride?

Strangely enough I felt I was trapped between feminism (or a certain group of Indian feminists) and state pride as strange bedfellows on the one side, and truth-seekers and change-makers on the other side. People who thought more about themselves and their own selfish agenda on the one side, and those who thought more about women and their rights on the other side.

Do you feel Indian politicians reacted badly to a foreign depiction of India because no matter how familiar the truth, governments hate to hear it spoken from the outside?

I watched the proceedings in the Lok Sabha on the morning after the ban and I have never been more shocked: grown men and women, politicians on all sides of the house were hysterical and unreasoning, screaming about tourism being decimated and the image of India being tarnished around the world. Again, there were 2 extraordinarily enlightened and dignified exceptions here in Javed Akhtar and Anna Agu. And the supreme irony of the reaction of the politicians is that the only shame that has been brought on India internally is THE BAN itself.

As a woman  who has been raped, and as a global citizen, I stand firmly on my right to comment against abuses and violations of women's human rights ANYWHERE in the world. I will not be silenced just because I do not 'belong' to the country in which a particular atrocity takes place. It is my right and my DUTY to speak out.

In 1927, Katherine Mayo wrote” Mother India” highlignting the issue of child marriage/abuse which sparked off a huge controversy .Gandhi had to despatch Cong leader Sarojini Naidu to the US  to clear the air so that the freedom struggle would not be hampered….almost 9 decades later, child marriage/abuse still exists  in some areas….

This is not a book I have read, and though it has been referred to a number of times in relation the film, I have not had the time ,but as far as the continuing prevalence of child marriage is concerned (and again, this is a GLOBAL phenomenon which is tragically not limited to one country or even a handful of them), I now believe (after my 2 years of work on the documentary) that child marriage is just another symptom of the disease that is gender inequality. Along with rape, acid attacks, trafficking, sex selection, and all other violations of women and girls, these are the metastases, the spread of the cancer, of the primary tumour that is the mind set of gender inequality. Treating the symptoms makes us nurses putting plasters on wounds, whereas we need to be surgeons and cut out the root cause - by changing the dominant mind-set.

Do you think the mindset has changed at all? Is the Indian woman truly liberated in the 21 st century?

No. The mindset has not changed to a marked enough degree, and generally women (with very few exceptions) are not truly liberated in ANY country across the globe. It's only a question of degree and of differing characteristics of inequality from country to country. Women will not be truly liberated until they are allowed to do everything men are allowed to do, until they earn equal pay for equal work, until they are equally represented in corporations and parliaments across the world, until they can move as they please and wear what they please without being raped and blamed for it, until they are viewed and treated as equal to men. Dr Ambedkar said "we measure the progress of society by the progress of its women" - we have a long, long way to go.

What is the perception of modern India’s woman in the West?

It's very hard to generalise about this. There are narrow-minded people everywhere in the world who will jump to conclusions because of having come across certain stereotypes to do with 'coy' subservient images of Indian women that abound in Bollywood films and advertising imagery, and knowing about arranged marriage and dowry and certain cultural practices in India which suggest to them that Indian women are encouraged to be wives rather than autonomous independent individuals.. The positive messages in the film are many and varied and are working on audiences the world over. It is only in India that the negative aspects and comments of the rapists and their lawyers are so obsessively focused onto the absolute exclusion of all that is positive in the film about India and Indian male and female role models.

Despite the ban here, your film was aired in several countries and at Cannes? What was the reaction?

The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. We've screened in upward of 20 countries by now, and at least 10 more planned in the next 2 months, and everywhere people are moved to tears, enraged (mostly by the lawyers' comments) and immediately understand that this is a global problem and are immediately ready to discuss their own issues with women in their own countries. There is not one screening I have had without people (men and women) coming up to me to offer themselves as volunteers in the fight for women's rights. Activists have been 'born' as a result of watching the film. The only negative comments there have been about the ban.

You have, in the past, worked with one of our finest actors, Om Puri..Has he or any  other Indian actor  come out in support of India’s Daughter?

Many Indian actors have come out in support of the film: Farhan Akhtar, Nandita Das, John Abraham and others. What surprises, in fact shocks, me greatly is that no concerted action or even loud voices have been heard in demanding this counter-productive and damaging ban be lifted. I often wonder where the impassioned and highly civilised voices of the protesters are now. Why are they silent?  Wrong will triumph as long as good men and women do and say nothing.

What are your future projects?

I have plans to produce a feature film (which pre-date this documentary) and I will see that through but I will make no other films. Instead I am dedicating my life 24/7 to travelling the world and amplifying the message of the documentary in campaigning for meaningful changes for women and girls. And, specifically, I am advising the UN Human Rights Office on a global education campaign which we are encouraging education ministers around the world to adopt to add equality education, moral values and ethics ("life skills") to numeracy and literacy in early years education.

I was recently at the Commonwealth education conference in the Bahamas, meeting with education ministers from the commonwealth and getting incredibly positive and enthusiastic responses to co-opting the initiative. Sadly, the Indian education minister, Ms Irani, refused to even discuss it with me..I can only pray that the Delhi High Court judge who is to make a decision on the legal status of the ban on 5th August, will make a wise and independent decision, and that the ban will be lifted and we can put this counter-productive feud behind.

Leslee took two years to finish the documentary, hoping that the result will help people open their eyes towards this mindset. The contrary opinions are that it may suggest the poisonous mindsets of the convicts to many men.

The debate continues amidst media channels in India and even among feminist intellectuals whether such people deserve a platform and freedom of expression. On the other side, another debate prolongs whether airing the documentary is good or bad for the country.