Rahiman nij mann ki vyatha mann hi rakho goy..
Suni athilay hai sabhi baant na lehi koy…
– Kavi Rahim
Please keep the grief of your heart buried in your heart…
Everyone is going to make fun and no one is going to share it if you tell….
– Poet Rahim
I got a call from a very dear friend who is a British citizen now, soon after I wrote an article on the much talked about BBC documentary, ‘India’s Daughter’. (You can read the article here) Sonal was very much impressed by the concluding lines of the article which said that,
We need to understand that we are called the rape capital not because more rapes happen here, but because the conviction rate is much higher in India compared to the other so called developed countries.
She said that her childhood has been spent in India and she did not come across as many rapes and sexual abuse cases in her neighborhood in India as she does in the United Kingdom now. But unlike India, none of these cases are highlighted in the media.
She also sent me a snapshot of the news in the city she lived and said that this was like daily news there.
Sonal was insisting me to write on this topic. She also narrated an experience wherein she was having dinner with the family and there was a news about India on the television. Sonal’s teenaged son got up with his plate and asked her, “Mom, why do they show only slums and poor people when they talk about India, why don’t they show the malls as well?”
Sonal did not have an answer. She wanted me to answer this. But neither did I have the answer.
There was a huge debate in our country on whether the documentary was made to understand the psychology of a rapist or it was just an attempt to shame India. And then someone who felt that, ‘India’s daughter’ was made to shame India made ‘United Kingdom’s daughters’.
According to Harvinder Singh’s documentary, 250 women in the UK are raped daily. The documentary also suggests that one-third of Britons believe women are responsible for rape, a claim made by one of the convicts, Mukesh, in the December 16 gang rape in the BBC documentary.
Watch the documentary here
“This is a reply to BBC for making a Video on Rape cases in other Countries when they are them self at the 5th place in World’s Rape list, to remind them “Daughter is Daughter, She is not Indian or British” & we have the same pain for British too.” – says Harvinder.
But whose shame is it? Is rape a shame for India or for the United Kingdom? Or is it a shame to the mankind, a shame to our existence as the most intelligent, sensitive and thoughtful creation of the Almighty? Whose shame is it? Are we sharing the pain of India’s or UK’s daughter through these documentaries or have we proved Poet Rahim right?
I still don’t have the answer to Sonal’s teenaged son’s question. I hope someone has!!!
