Time for paradigm shift in male mindset

Brutal gang rape and murder of Nirbhaya in Delhi on December 16, 2012, shocked India and jolted the conscience of the world. The unending fast-track trial of the convicts is still on. Meanwhile, the BBC already aired and uploaded on the ‘You Tube’ Leslee Udwin’s (a British film producer and a rape victim herself)‘India’s Daughter’, the 60 minute documentary film, advancing its release schedule by two days before the International Women’s Day(IWD). Incidentally, United Nation’s theme for IWD 2015 is: “Empowering Women-Empowering Humanity…”

Leslee Udwin interviewed the accused, lawyers, parents of the victim and a cross-section of people in Delhi for producing her ‘India’s Daughter’ documentary. The Union Home Minister’s announcement of the ban on the documentary made three ago turns out to be ineffectual as the film is already accessible to millions of viewers across the globe. Mukesh Singh, one of the convicts in the heinous rape and murder case of Nirbhaya, blames women in general for inducing rapes. UN Secretary General’s spokesperson responded to the utterances of the accused as ‘unspeakable.

Let’s examine for a moment the misogynistic mindset of a few Indians from a cross section of the Indian society. The Chief Minister of an Indian state commented: “if a girl is dressed decently, a boy will not look at her in the wrong way.” How is this statement different from what Mukesh Singh said in the course of the interview with Leslee Udwin in the Tihar Jail of Delhi? The convict Singh blames the rape victim for wearing “wrong clothes” and for her late night outing with a male companion.

The Defence lawyer who is associated with this case, is reported to have told Udwin that he would burn alive his daughter or sister if she gets involved in pre-marital sex. One can cite numerous responses of this kind illustrating patriarchal orientation of the male world. The documentary provoked incisive discussion in the Parliament and outside.

Kirron Kher’s views on the issue need to be quoted-People need to understand that the right to give consent to their bodies is that of the woman’s and cannot be abrogated to somebody else. Fellow-Parliamentarian Anu Aga echoes similar sentiments. For them, the real issue is not the award of death penalty to the rape culprits, and much less ban on ‘Indian Daughter.’ In other words, they focus more on a different mindset of the male world and plead for new gender dynamics different from the existing outdated ones.

The entire issue revolves round the freedoms and choices of women as to how they would like to shape their sensibilities and what they would like to wear. Exhibition of ‘India’s Daughter’ documentary in India would have been useful in exposing the rapist’s brutality in its worst form for the male world. Such a film has the potentialities to mould and change men at least out of revulsion towards the horrific crime. In any case, a ban on the film is no solution to the problem for the enlightened modern women.

Canadian writer Margaret Laurence observes that ‘men are our sons, lovers and husbands, and we cannot declare war on them.’ She emphasizes that men need to be liberated at the mental level so as to treat their women as equals in every manner implying a ‘paradigm shift of the mindset’ as the only viable remedy. This only endorses what the Father of the nation had envisioned-The day a woman can walk freely at midnight on the roads, that day we can say that India has achieved freedom.

By:Indrasena Kancharla