March 8 marks International Women's Day. And back in India's media spotlight is the story of 23-year-old Jyoti Singh, who was gang raped by six men on a bus after she was coming home from seeing a film with a male friend. She's the main subject in the recently released BBC documentary film titled India's Daughter. And that film highlights the 2012 mass protests that erupted in India after the news of her rape and eventual tragic death sent shockwaves throughout Indian society. Let's take a look at a clip from the trailer.VIDEO PLAYSAs you saw in that film, this is a topic that is causing such controversy in India. And the government has banned the film from being released, considering the film contains an interview with one of the rapists. Now joining us to put this all into context is our guest, Priya Gopal. She's joining us from Cambridge, England, where she is a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. She recently wrote an article for The Guardian titled "Reducing Rape to a Generic Indian Male Mindset Fails Its Victims". Thank you for joining us, Priya.PRIYAMVADA GOPAL, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE: Happy to be here.DESVARIEUX: So, Priya, what's at the root of this controversy?GOPAL: The film has divided Indian feminists. There are feminists who I should say believe that the film is important inasmuch as it highlights and brings awareness to the issue of rape.But there is also a substantial section of the women's movement in India and its leadership who believe that the timing of the film is problematic, given that the key interviewee, Mukesh Singh, who is one of the convicted rapists, is coming up for appeal. His appeal is being heard before the Supreme Court of India. And there is substantial concern that an interview by him and the inflammatory statements that he has made could prejudice a case that is still under review. And so there is a kind of legal anxiety there. Prominent feminist lawyers have pointed out that women and women in India and the women's movement need the law and they need, in some sense, to abide by judicial processes in their own interests. And so, suspending them or diverting them in the interests of bringing awareness to an issue is questionable. And so there's a kind of feminist case for not abrogating or interfering with judicial processes.The other issue that some feminists have raised is the question of the emphasis of the film, which is very heavily on what is described in the film as the mentality of men, and much more, I think, described in the interviews with the filmmaker in writeups about the global campaign that is going to be launched after International Women's Day, which is, again, emphasizing male mentality in a kind of generic--on a very general sense, and also is making a very problematic distinction for many feminists, including myself, between a savage and barbaric mentality that rapes and a modern mentality that is ostensibly free of rape.DESVARIEUX: Alright. We actually have a clip from the filmmaker, Leslee Udwin. She comes out defending the film in an NDTV interview, and she explains why she decided to interview one of the rapists. Let's take a look at what she had to say.~~~LESLEE UDWIN, DIRECTOR, INDIA'S DAUGHTER: Why we must face up to this is because during these 31 hours the attitude that I understood and perceived in these men is: what's the big deal? Everyone's doing it. Why are they looking at us? Isn't that important for the public to know? Isn't it important for the public to know that these men have zero remorse? Why do they feel it's acceptable? Because our society makes it acceptable, because when a girl is born, sweets aren't distributed at her birth. They're distributed at the birth of a boy. A boy is given a full glass of milk, a girl is given half a glass of milk. This is where the problem lies. You tell men that women are of no value, of course they're going to do what they want with her. Why not?~~~DESVARIEUX: Priya, do you think there's some truth to what she has to say, that Indian society doesn't value women the same way that they value men?GOPAL: I think there's absolutely no doubt about that, that inasmuch as one can make generalizations, India has deeply misogynistic cultures and communities. And that is, in a sense, really to state the obvious. Having said that, of course, rape culture is pervasive, misogyny is pervasive, sexism is pervasive. We have very high incidences of rape in countries such as Sweden and the United States and sexual violence. So it seems to me that to simply stress mentality is to look for an easy answer to the question of how rape happens, in what context it happens, and how it's used. So I don't think that any feminist that I know who has raised queries about the film is denying there is a problem with how women are treated in India, and indeed elsewhere. The question is: is simply talking about a mindset really giving us a full and useful picture, really, of how rape functions in different contexts in India? I mean, I'm very reluctant to use the term India, because we're talking about different cultures, communities, urban contexts, rural contexts, costs, different milieus in which rape happens, and they happen for different reasons and in different ways.DESVARIEUX: Okay. Let's talk about some of--give us more of a full picture, some of the systemic issues that you bring up in your recent Guardian article. You wrote, quote,
"Rape can be a perfectly
modern weapon that is intimately connected to other systems of
privilege, exploitation and inequality, including, in the Indian
context, caste oppression, religious chauvinism, resource appropriation
(...) and the vicious economic inequalities fostered by an unfettered
capitalism prosperity that has yet to bring basic shelter and
nourishment to millions."
It seems that you are making
this connection between rape and economic oppression, essentially. How
do you make that connection? And do you feel like that is a bit of a
stretch?GOPAL: Okay. Let me clarify one thing. When I made
that connection, I was not saying that it's poor men who rape. In fact,
one of my problems with the film and one of the problems other
feminists have expressed with the film is that it actually ends up
suggesting that it is poor men who rape because they're raised in slums
and they're raised without education and they don't have any outlet, and
so they rape. I mean, this is actually a problem with the film, that it
doesn't show the diversity of the context in which rape happens,
including, of course, by wealthy men, middle-class men, people in very
high positions. So I am not actually saying that if you
are poor or you're deprived, you rape. What I'm saying is that in a
context where there is deprivation, where there is caste violence, where
there is whether a communal or interreligious tensions, rape functions
differently as a weapon. Rape in all cases, no matter where it takes
place in the world, is a weapon.And we have to ask in what
ways that weapon is used, who is using it. So, when caste privilege in
India is exercised in villages, it is upper-caste men who often rape
lower-caste/Dalit women, and that is a way of entrenching and asserting
their privilege. Equally, there are men who are deeply disenfranchised
by the system and in whose case class rage sometimes--and not only, but
sometimes can take the form of exercising violence on the body of women
seen to be Westernized or middle-class or privileged. So
I'm not making a simple causal connection. I'm saying that when we look
at rape, we need to look at multiple causal factors, because if you
don't do that, then all you're saying is, well, as long as you sort of
tell people rape is a bad idea and it's not very modern and then they
should stop doing it, they'll stop doing it. To me the
film is not offensive. It's a missed opportunity to talk about the
multiple contexts in which rape takes place in India. And let us also
remember it is used as a weapon against the bodies of minority women. It
is used in the state of Kashmir by the Armed Forces, which have special
impunity when it comes to crimes committed by them. It takes place in
corporate workplaces. It is in some ways valorized in Indian cinema. It
takes place in bedrooms. Marital rape is a problem. So
what I'm saying is, rather than actually find a monocausal answer in a
kind of apparently ancient mentality, we need to look at the ways in
which rape is very much a part of modern life, and we have to ask why. I think the film's opposition between modern, educated people and atavistic, poor traditional men is not helpful.DESVARIEUX:
Alright. Priya, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about how some
Indian feminists have actually taken issue with the title of the film
as well. It's called India's Daughter. And they've--other associated
organizations, Daughters of India, for example, they're saying that
women shouldn't be protected as rape victims because they're daughters
or mothers, but rather because they're human beings. Is that wrong, to
appeal to people's familial emotions? Doesn't this get people to connect
more with the victim? What's your take?GOPAL: The
critique of this is quite specific. Men are often appealed to not rape
or to not exercise sexual violence in their capacity as fathers and
brothers. So, in India, very often when there is street harassment of
women, a women might ask, don't you have a sister or a mother? And the
point is that if one is critiquing and challenging a patriarchal
mentality, then one doesn't solve that by appealing to patriarchal
categories. The issue here is that you might not have a mother or a
sister, you might not have a daughter, a woman might not see herself as a
daughter, but she still has the right not to be raped. The
other point--and I want to connect this to the film again. You will
recall that the shocking statements by the defense lawyers include
saying that in our culture we don't allow daughters out of the house
after 7:30 or 8:30, and if daughters are allowed out of the house, then
they essentially have to take what's coming their way. And it seems to
me that to continue the conversation about rape and women's bodies in
the terms set down by patriarchy is self-limiting. And that, I think, is
the nub of the problem that feminists have with the title of the film.
And, indeed, young women, particularly young women in colleges and in
the workplace today, do not necessarily see themselves as entitled to
safety because they're daughters or sisters. They see themselves as
entitled to safety because women, like men, are entitled to safety.DESVARIEUX:
Alright, Priya, let's turn the corner little bit and talk about
solutions. What do you see as some real solutions in order to deal with
some of these root issues at the heart of rape not only in India but on a
global scale? What are some sort-term and long-term goals that people
should be trying to fight for?GOPAL: Well, again, as I
said earlier, there is no magic bullet. It isn't just a question of
mentalities and educating people and then making them realize rape is
wrong and really shouldn't do it. I think, then, as I
said, rape has multiple causes, and so you have to situate a discussion
about rape in a larger discussion about equality, fairness, rights,
within which women, whether they're upper-class or whether they are
working women or poor women, are entitled to rights as human beings. Now,
this is not to erase the specificity of gender violence. It's very
specific, and sexual violence has to be looked at as what it is. But
what I'm suggesting and I think what other feminists are suggesting is
that the discussion has to take place in terms of other discussions. You
know, what role does economics play? What role does education play?
What are the different ideologies that go into diminishing women? What
is being defined as modern? I mean, one of the aspects of
the film I found striking is that it seems to define modernity mainly in
terms of acquiring a professional degree and being able to go to a
workplace and earn a middle-class salary. And in that sense, the poor
young woman, Nirbhaya, or Jyoti, was depicted as a kind of ideal victim,
because she did all the right things by the book of modern,
economically buoyant India. But there is no such thing, as
you and I know, as an ideal victim. Women are victimized in different
contexts. And we need to pay attention contextually to what is going on.
We need to--education is important. But so is a wider discussion about
fairness and equality.
