#IndiasDaughter

So the Indian Government has banned the BBC Four documentary ‘India’s Daughter’. The government highly underestimates those who have voted it into power. You ban it on TV, we will watch it on YouTube, and we will also download it because when you ban it on YouTube we will upload it again a million times for everyone to watch. We are Janata-Janardhan and we get what we want, we are smart like that.

As shocking as the documentary is, the reaction of a lot of people is even more shocking. I openly supported BBC for broadcasting this documentary and chided those who indulged in abusive banter against the movie, against women and against democracy. There are people who have stated things such as “BBC is very much notorious for showing dark side of developing countries n always justifies its "white agent" role” (real quote from a highly educated and popular Telugu news reader on Facebook). For some people this whole episode went from a period of self-reflection to finding a racist angle. How is that even sane?

Yes the documentary didn’t need to be banned. It should have instead played on Doordarshan for the grass roots to watch and understand. But this whole furore over BBC revealing Nirbhaya’s name and graphic details of the horrific rape is belittling the attempts of some nice people to make millions of strangers they don’t know wake up and smell the filth. 

We need to watch this documentary.  How else are we going to be shocked? How else will we know there are monsters among us? Those graphic descriptions were relayed to the whole world even before Nirbhaya died. Because we knew the graphic details we woke up to protest for months, change laws and bring on the death sentence. Instead of being angry and uncomfortable about the truth of our culture, we need to think of ways around how we are going to change it. If we do not want BBC to make such movies then we need to make an effort to stop this cruelty. We need to be a part of a movement that says no to sexual crime and violence. Be a part of that much needed change. We all need to change.

 

In a span of few months, India went from being the first country to reach Mars in the first attempt to being a country where cows are safer than women according to law. Does it not explicitly demonstrate our mind-set? If this does not, I do not know what will.