Comment 110205

By ananthsrivastav (registered) | Posted March 13, 2015 at 12:44:36

I do not think the film said anything untrue. But its focus is on "exposing" a supposedly majority Indian male worldview. It pulls in statements from the criminals, their lawyers who themselves appear to be fringe elements- it was pretty difficult to find lawyers to argue on their behalf to start with, forensic psychiatrists explaining the criminal mind, a person who runs a protective home for juveniles- who is duty bound to explain the background of street children and a ex-chief minister who is desperate to redeem herself of past statements about the incident. The friend and tutor of the girl himself would undergone psychological trauma. These statements are then extrapolated and generalized to "most' males of Indian origin.

Serial rapes and violent attacks on women are happening everyday in the best of cities, we do not see these criminals getting prime time on TV. Do we see terrorists and their doctrinaires and murderers and rapists in Europe and the US getting 'pulpit' time on Western TV? Did the Norwegian who killed 60 teenagers get a documentary where he gets to espouse his "thoughts"? Nazism, racism, religious bigotry, xenophobia is plenty beneath the surface of European society- that does not mean that we put the bigots and their defendants on TV and beam their opinions across the planet.

Udwin says she has not seen a similar reaction anywhere else in the world to rape where a spontaneous outburst happened across the country. But film does not focus how all of society thousands upon thousands of men came out on the street to protest. Most of these men and women have grown up in traditional homes with conservative ideas about family and the role of women- but that did not mean they were not sickened by evil or repulsed by forcible sex. To equate patriarchal societies and conservative thinking with an attitude that violence towards women is acceptable is like saying that women with a career do not care about family life, or having PG rated films encourage bad social behavior. The vast majority of conservative traditional and uneducated men even in the most rural of locations are first human beings then fathers, brothers and sons who are caring towards women and children.

Do we need a change in attitudes in India? Sure we do! But do not make the case that most men find rape acceptable, I have lived and worked in rural India for years and in its biggest cities and know that this is false. We do need a change in how we view marriage and dating, before we have men and women who understand each other and are comfortable with each other.

Do I think that the world is out to malign India- no I do not. But the rest of the world seeks to sweep its dirt under the carpet. The statistics quoted by the film that a woman is raped every 22 min in India is juxtaposed to a Western figure when reduced is a rape every 9 minutes in Europe.

Comment edited by ananthsrivastav on 2015-03-13 12:45:08

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