America
Indian government should hang its head in shame: BBC filmmaker
By
Arun KumarWashington, March 11
British-based filmmaker
Leslee Udwin says the Indian government should hang its head in shame
for banning her documentary on the December 16, 2012 fatal gang-rape of a
23-year-old Delhi woman.
India banned the BBC documentary -
"India's Daughter" - on the rape of the woman who has come to be known
as Nirbhaya or the Fearless, following an uproar over convicted rapist
Mukesh Singh's comments blaming the victim.
"The home minister
(Rajnath Singh) blamed the protesters when these were protests on the
Gandhian level, peaceful and right and good," Udwin told the Los Angeles
Times. "The irony is it only became violent when the police got
involved."
"The government should hang its head in shame" for the
ban, she was quoted as saying in an interview on Monday before the US
premiere of her film at event in downtown Manhattan ahead of an airing
on PBS later this year.
Udwin, has also denied accusations in the
Indian media that Mukesh Singh was either paid for his time or
interviewed without his consent. A title card at the start of the film
refutes the latter claim.
Actresses Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto,
Dakota Fanning and singer Chris Martin were among those at the premiere,
an event organized by women's-rights groups Vital Voices and Plan
International at Manhattan's Baruch College.
The celebrities
became involved because of the initial interest of Alan Rickman, who is a
friend of Udwin's and began spreading the word among other
entertainers, the Times said.
Streep led a candle-lighting
ceremony before the screening, reading some of the victim's accounts of
the assault, then issued a plea to the audience.
"We're called
here to contend with something more than rape," Streep was quoted as
saying. "What is worse than violence? Violence sanctioned by misogyny."
Pinto,
a producer on the movie, told the Times in an interview before the
screening that she saw this as "a universal story, and something I got
involved with because it's not just about what happens in India".
She
gave an address after the screening in which she criticised even
Western attitudes about the Indian gang-rape, noting a TV script she had
been sent recently that contained a joke about it.
She also issued a wide-ranging plea to people as diverse policymakers and teenage boys to shift their thinking.
She closed her speech by asking people to close their eyes and be "bathed in the light, the light that was Jyoti."
Udwin also took the stage after the screening as part of a panel discussion about women's rights issues.
"The
disease is not rape, and the disease is not human trafficking," she was
quoted as saying. "The disease is gender inequality. And all these
things are the metastases of the primary tumour."
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])