[Hindu, 'Dahan' movie review]: Indifference, the benchmark

[Chukka Srinivas]

[from sekhar].

Indifference, the benchmark
Date: 07-12-1997 :: Pg: 27 :: Col: a
KALPANA SHARMA

IF you saw a woman being molested and assaulted by a
group of men as you drove by in a car or a taxi, would
you stop and intervene? Or would you drive past and try
and erase from your memory the disturbing sight? The
curse of modern living is the growing indifference that
is developing in people towards other human beings. If
you care, if you take up cudgels on behalf of a
stranger, if you intervene, you are thought of as a
crank, a trouble-maker, a busy-body or worse. Being
indifferent is normal behaviour.

Some of these attitudes have been explored in a thoughtful and moving
film by the young Bengali film-maker Rituparno Ghosh. ``Dahan'',
Ghosh's film which closed the recently concluded Festival of Films
organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images (MAMI), deserved the
award bestowed upon it by the FIPRESCI (The International Federation
of the Film Press) with Adoor Gopalakrishnan's ``Kathapurushan''.
Apart from its other virtues, what one appreciates about ``Dahan'' is
the fact that here is a film that actually deals with the choices,
challenges and dilemmas that educated, modern young women face in
many Indian cities.

Set in contemporary Calcutta, the film is based on a true story when
a young married woman was molested and assaulted by five men in full
view of dozens of spectators. No one helped her as she resisted while
her husband was beaten senseless. She was saved only because a young
school-teacher, passing by in an autorickshaw, stopped and
intervened. Jhinuk, the young woman, managed to prevent the men from
forcibly taking the victim, Romita, with them and eventually
persuaded the husband and wife to register a police complaint.

But the story does not end there. In fact, that is the starting
point. For as many middle-class women know from their own experience,
the attitudes of people closest to you come into the open when you
decide to fight on an issue that others find uncomfortable because it
exposes them to the public gaze.

For instance, the only witness to the incident who is willing to
testify is the school teacher, Jhinuk. Yet, she is subjected to
tremendous emotional blackmail by her fiance, a young ambitious
professional. ``If you do this, my chances of a promotion will be
jeopardised''. ``If you don't do this, I might succeed in getting
ahead''. ``What about my convictions?'' the girl asks.``Don't they
matter?'' She knows the answer even as she asks.

Romita's fate is even worse. Her family is a typical westernised,
prosperous, professional family. Before marriage, she is encouraged
to think for herself. But even such a family thinks it fit to marry
her off to the son of a ``good and respected'', but not so prosperous,
family. And typical of many girls who negotiate between tradition and
modernity, Romita leaves her nuclear family to enter a joint family
where the only people in the house during the day are the women.

The initial sympathy from her in-laws and her husband after her
horrifying experience quickly turns to suspicion and blame as the
publicity touches the entire family. Did she know her tormentors
before marriage? If she did not, then why, out of all the girls at
the Metro station, did these men pick on her? And so on and so forth.

Worse still, even Jhinuk, who is initially lauded by the media for
her courage, is questioned by the defence lawyer in court about why
she travels late in the evening by public transport, what kind of
friends she has and how many of them are men, etc.. Predictably, both
victim and saviour, because they are women, are questioned in the
public sphere and in the private about their behaviour while the
focus is deliberately moved away from the perpetrators of the crime
and the silent spectators who by their indifference, abetted in the
crime.

This aspect of the story is a carbon copy of dozens of incidents of
crimes against women that are reported in the media. In a recent
incident in Jaipur, for instance, where a young woman was gang-raped
in the middle of the day in a boy's hostel of Rajasthan University,
not a single individual came to her aid as she screamed for help. And
the initial sympathy for her quickly turned to suspicion about her
``moral character'' while the horror of the crime receded from public
memory.

Another familiar development that is portrayed in the film is how in
many such cases - particularly when the accused are well- connected -
they are usually absolved by our courts.

What is refreshing about Ghosh's film is that he does not depict
either the victim, or the woman who comes to her rescue, as super
women. They are vulnerable and ordinary women who by force of
circumstance have been placed in an extraordinary situation. While
Romita bends to family pressure and refuses to identify the culprits
when the case finally comes to trial, Jhinuk defies pressure from her
fiance and deposes in court. But she breaks down under clever
cross-examination by an oily defence lawyer and is unable to
forcefully put forward her testimony.

But the experience of waiting for the trial, and finally going
through with it only to have the culprits released, educates the two
young women about the attitudes of their own kin about women. They
see how families encourage women to think independently and then pull
down the shutters if such independence exposes them to the hazards of
surviving in the public sphere. Rather than preparing them to
confront these realities, they would prefer to ``protect'' them and
ideally to imprison them within the four walls of the marital home.

This story is not about some bygone era. This is the Calcutta of
today. Also the Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune,
etc. of today. Speak to any young, educated woman in her twenties
from any of these cities and you will hear similar stories, of
friends who agreed to marriages arranged by their parents who are
now trapped within tradition and who, despite a liberal education,
cannot find the courage to break out of it. Even women who have
chosen their own partners in marriage have to decide, as Jhinuk does
in the film, whether they are prepared to walk entirely alone or
whether, like the other women in their families, they will make the
necessary compromises that allow so many marriages to survive.

But more telling than even this is what the film exposes about the
attitudes of the middle class in particular about getting
``involved.'' Whether it is pollution, garbage or violence, the
majority prefer to be bystanders in the erroneous belief that the
problem will never land at their doorstep. Only when it does do they
reluctantly act, or participate in an initiative taken by someone
else.

If assaults on women are increasing in many of our cities, a good
part of it is attributable to this indifference. In a city like
Mumbai, for instance, most girls will fight back. In the past, if a
man ``acted fresh'' in a bus, for instance, and if the girl protested,
the majority of people on the bus, men or women, would come to her
aid. I have known of incidents where a molester has been forced off
the bus by the passengers. But even in this city, where women are
safer than in practically any other city in India, things are
beginning to change.

All the laws and protective legislation for women will be worthless
if people are unwilling to fight for the rights of other human
beings.

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