South Asia Citizens Web

On the one hand this could be an attempt by these women to reassert control over the Indian conversation about rape and women’s rights, feeling that British filmmaker Leslee Udwin has taken it away from them with this film. That’s understandable, from an intersectional viewpoint, and also an anti-imperialist one. I can see the argument that a white woman has swooped in and made statements about India – “a sick culture” – that Indian feminists would find insulting. Yet it’s not hard to see that the sick culture Udwin refers to is the rape culture that is actually sick and diseased. Should an Indian woman have made this documentary? Perhaps. Was it wrong for a British woman to do so? I don’t think so.

Senior journalist and Outlook Group’s editorial chairman Vinod Mehta died at 72.

A few days ago our finance minister and the legal brain of the current government Mr Arun Jaitley spoke in a conference and said that ‘you can not ban anything in the current age of information’. ‘How can any government ban any thing when the flow of information is so far and vast he said’. It is not more than a month when the government was seen hiding itself in the war cries of nationalism and arrogance of ‘we will see’ and ‘India’s reputation is being targeted’.

The UN Human Rights Commission’s decision to investigate violations and the huge loss of life during the last months of the war concluded in 2009 was a significant victory for the victims. The dignity of the victims required that the truth must be told without fear or favour, and processes of justice and restoration set in motion. And the wrong was not all on one side. Dignity also demands that we await the verdict of the judges with restraint and reverence for the name of justice.

All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) strongly opposes the blanket ban on the documentary titled “India’s Daughter” made by BBC 4. This is a knee jerk reaction that constitutes an attack on the freedom of expression. Furthermore the film reveals the reality of the brutality of rape without sensationalizing it.