New Delhi - A documentary featuring men convicted of a notorious gang rape in Delhi is both condemned as a “conspiracy to defame India” and praised as required viewing for schoolchildren.
For months, she was called Nirbhaya - the Hindi word for fearless.
Jyoti Singh, the 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was tortured, gang-raped with an iron rod in a bus in New Delhi in 2012 and died as a result, was given the name by local media because the law forbids the naming of a rape victim.
Over two years later, the government has banned a documentary about the rape, and in the process invoked an international media firestorm that may have broadened the film's reach.
Directed by Britain's Leslee Udwin, India's Daughter features interviews with convicted rapists and two lawyers of the accused, all of whom defend the idea that women are to blame for assaults and sexual violence committed against them.
Mukesh Singh, one of the convicted rapists, said decent women don't go out at night, and that a woman is more responsible for rape than a man.
Future rape victims would be at greater risk of being killed if the death penalty was imposed on rapists, he said.
The lawyers for the rapists make similar comments in Udwin's film about women who go out late alone or with men who are not relatives.
“The horrifying details of the rape had led me to expect monsters,” said Udwin, who interviewed three of the convicted rapists over seven days in Delhi's Tihar Jail.
“These were ordinary, apparently normal and certainly unremarkable men who shared a rigid and 'learnt' set of attitudes towards women,” Udwin said.
Her documentary and these observations have raised the question: Has the government banned the controversial film because a conservative society does not want to hold a mirror to itself?
Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the parliament that he was “deeply hurt” when he learned of the remarks made by the rapist.
“Under no circumstances should this be telecast,” Singh said, adding that the comments were derogatory and an affront to the dignity of women.
Udwin's film, shown on Wednesday night by the BBC in Britain, is scheduled to be shown on other television channels in Canada and Europe.
Venkaiah Naidu, minister for parliamentary affairs from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has said the Indo-British production “is an international conspiracy to defame India.”
But outside the government, Indians see a need for the film.
“People are so scared of facing their own feelings in this country,” Sahil Kini, a 29-year-old engineer based in Bangalore, told dpa.
“So many people in Indian society share the view that if a woman is out at night wearing provocative clothes, it's her fault,” Kini said.
“This documentary forces them to face the fact that they have something in common with this beast. And that's what's really causing this 'damage to our image,'“ he said.
Kini, like thousands of others across India, has watched the documentary on YouTube and other websites. “Banning something like this is guaranteed free publicity,” Kini said.
“Watched #IndiasDaughter. Does not 'defame India' as alleged but shows that rape in India or elsewhere is encouraged by patriarchal mindsets,” wrote Tenzing Lamsang on Twitter.
Udwin herself made an impassioned appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to watch the film during an interview with NDTV news, a station that has been prevented from airing the documentary on March 8 to mark International Women's Day.
“Will banning the documentary achieve anything?” columnist Shobhaa De writes on the NDTV website. “There is no face left to save in any case. The international community is aware of India's shame and openly labels Delhi the rape capital of the world.”
According to De, men like the rapists think that women who have ambitions and work hard and value their freedoms are dangerous to society, De said.
India's Daughter must be made compulsory viewing in schools, colleges and government offices, De said, because a civilised society must not shun the truth.
“The real 'embarrassment' India needs to confront is its own horrific reality ... and the shame that goes with it. Not a bold documentary,” De wrote.
Sapa-dpa