(Sonia Singh is NDTV's Editorial Director)
I watched 'India's Daughter' last week prepared to hate it. NDTV had been approached by independent filmmaker Leslee Udwin regarding her documentary for the BBC, part of a global initiative on Women's Day to focus attention on sexual crimes against women and how societal attitudes must change. It was a film, she said, had been made as a tribute to Nirbhaya and the thousands of protesters that came out after this ghastly crime in a spontaneous show of solidarity, scenes she said she had never seen in any other country. Leslee had asked to use our footage of the time, as did many other international news channels, and now that the BBC had agreed for it to be part of a global initiative, she requested NDTV to be the Indian broadcast partner.
Why should we give this disgusting man any publicity were my first thoughts as I sat down to watch it? 59 minutes later, I had changed my mind.
Others as well - Nirbhaya's young tutor, the doctor who examined her, the police constable who talked of how so many people stopped to stare at the gruesome accident but no one came forward to help, Justice Leila Seth, interviewed in painstaking detail by Leslee over two years. It was their voices that lingered. Contrary to the perception the title may create, the story may be set in India but statistics shown in the documentary make it clear this is a GLOBAL problem.
I insisted it would be too traumatic for them to hear us discuss the rapist's mindset. "It doesn't matter to me at all, I have kept a stone on my heart," said Asha. I agreed, but insisted she should join us only in the second part when we would see what the lawyers said. "We heard them say this in court too, they want publicity but my question is why the Supreme Court hasn't even begun hearing the appeal?" asked Asha - a question for which neither I nor my panelists had any answer.
The first question I asked Leslee Udwin (whom I had met for the first time just the previous day) was if she interviewed the rapist to glorify him for TRPs?
Within a few hours of our programme, the matter had escalated. MPs across parties, BJP, Congress, JDU demanded a ban, women's activists asked for it not to be shown, Twitter gave its verdict, a government ban plus court order meant NDTV would not air it on the 8th as scheduled.
"What?" I asked. "Nirbhaya's father called my producer this morning, "she said, "Badriji asked her to tell me not to worry and thanked me for making the film. That's all the validation, I need."
Will the controversy around India's Daughter focus our nation's attention once again not just on Nirbhaya and her case, but on the case of Zaheera in Lucknow, gang raped 10 years ago at 13 but still waiting for her trial to begin ? Will we look inwards and focus on how India treats all its Daughters? Will we shift our outrage over a foreign woman daring to show us unpalatable truths to the reality of what's being said? Whatever your opinion of the documentary - banal, stereotypical, patronizing - even if you hate it, if it makes us look at the reality around us, perhaps this sound and fury would have achieved something substantive for India and its citizens.
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