1.
Billed as ‘more shocking than Bandit Queen,’ when the film Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women was screened at international film-festivals in 2003, it certainly created a stir. Set in a small village in the middle of India, it opens with a young mother lying on a bed, surrounded by midwives, about to give birth. Her husband waits outside with a few friends in nervous expectation. Suddenly a newborn child’s cry is heard and the men burst into cheers, only to be silenced when a downbeat midwife comes out and announces: “It’s a girl.”
It’s a sign of things to come. The next day the father stands in front of a big vat of milk in a field, with his baby daughter in his hands. There’s a brief silence as his friend looks on. “Next year, a boy,” the father says firmly and submerges his baby daughter into the milk until the bubbles stop rising to the surface. They both walk away.
A few decades later the village has changed dramatically. It is now solely populated by uncouth, aggressive men who release their sexual frustration by watching pornographic films or going to dance shows where men dress up as women and dance suggestively. As men fail to find marriageable women even from surrounding villages, bestiality becomes commonplace. When the richest man in the village eventually finds the only girl around for miles, he immediately buys her from her father and tells her to marry his five sons. The sons have to share a wife or stay unmarried forever. She is not asked for her consent. And that is when everyone’s nightmare begins.
It made for such uncomfortable viewing that Matrubhoomi (‘Motherland’) struggled to find a distributor in India for years despite being shot in Hindi. Though the film was set as a bleak and dystopian vision of the future, in parts of India it is already becoming a chilling reality.
It is always difficult to predict watershed moments that change a nation, but they are always sparked off when an incident shines a searing light on a much broader problem. When thousands of women and men came out to protest on the streets of New Delhi in late 2012, it was clear their anger was not just about the gang-rape of the female student. ‘India Has a Woman Problem’ ran a headline in an article by Rashmee Roshan Lall in Foreign Policy magazine; Sonia Faleiro wrote in The New York Times that the capital, New Delhi, had become “habituated to the debasement of women”. Neither of them were alone in that assessment: Hindustan Times, India Today, Outlook, The Times of India, Zee TV and media across the world featured stories by Indian women recounting similar views.
Until recently most western media narratives on India have revolved around its economic growth or the rich fabric of its mysterious and colourful culture. We know about the country that produces Bollywood films, hot curries, cricket fanatics and engineering graduates by the truckload. We read about India’s tensions with Pakistan and China, and how those in grinding poverty rub up against rich billionaires living in 27-storey mansions. We see pictures from the millions who make the pilgrimage to Kumbh Mela , kids flinging colour at each other during the festival of Holi , or people lighting candles during Diwali . These are the images we are familiar and comfortable with.
The outside world has rarely focused on the status of women in Indian society as it has with Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. In June 2012, when India was rated the worst G20 country for women, there was a palpable sense of disbelief: ‘ what, even worse than Saudi Arabia?’ Yes, even Saudi Arabia, which bans women from driving, was rated better in a poll of gender specialists published by Reuters. They concluded that women were particularly vulnerable in India because of high instances of female trafficking, child-marriages, dowry related deaths and slavery.
The rapid modernisation and industrialisation of the last 20 years has created a new middle class and
Billed as ‘more shocking than Bandit Queen,’ when the film Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women was screened at international film-festivals in 2003, it certainly created a stir. Set in a small village in the middle of India, it opens with a young mother lying on a bed, surrounded by midwives, about to give birth. Her husband waits outside with a few friends in nervous expectation. Suddenly a newborn child’s cry is heard and the men burst into cheers, only to be silenced when a downbeat midwife comes out and announces: “It’s a girl.”
It’s a sign of things to come. The next day the father stands in front of a big vat of milk in a field, with his baby daughter in his hands. There’s a brief silence as his friend looks on. “Next year, a boy,” the father says firmly and submerges his baby daughter into the milk until the bubbles stop rising to the surface. They both walk away.
A few decades later the village has changed dramatically. It is now solely populated by uncouth, aggressive men who release their sexual frustration by watching pornographic films or going to dance shows where men dress up as women and dance suggestively. As men fail to find marriageable women even from surrounding villages, bestiality becomes commonplace. When the richest man in the village eventually finds the only girl around for miles, he immediately buys her from her father and tells her to marry his five sons. The sons have to share a wife or stay unmarried forever. She is not asked for her consent. And that is when everyone’s nightmare begins.
It made for such uncomfortable viewing that Matrubhoomi (‘Motherland’) struggled to find a distributor in India for years despite being shot in Hindi. Though the film was set as a bleak and dystopian vision of the future, in parts of India it is already becoming a chilling reality.
It is always difficult to predict watershed moments that change a nation, but they are always sparked off when an incident shines a searing light on a much broader problem. When thousands of women and men came out to protest on the streets of New Delhi in late 2012, it was clear their anger was not just about the gang-rape of the female student. ‘India Has a Woman Problem’ ran a headline in an article by Rashmee Roshan Lall in Foreign Policy magazine; Sonia Faleiro wrote in The New York Times that the capital, New Delhi, had become “habituated to the debasement of women”. Neither of them were alone in that assessment: Hindustan Times, India Today, Outlook, The Times of India, Zee TV and media across the world featured stories by Indian women recounting similar views.
Until recently most western media narratives on India have revolved around its economic growth or the rich fabric of its mysterious and colourful culture. We know about the country that produces Bollywood films, hot curries, cricket fanatics and engineering graduates by the truckload. We read about India’s tensions with Pakistan and China, and how those in grinding poverty rub up against rich billionaires living in 27-storey mansions. We see pictures from the millions who make the pilgrimage to Kumbh Mela , kids flinging colour at each other during the festival of Holi , or people lighting candles during Diwali . These are the images we are familiar and comfortable with.
The outside world has rarely focused on the status of women in Indian society as it has with Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. In June 2012, when India was rated the worst G20 country for women, there was a palpable sense of disbelief: ‘ what, even worse than Saudi Arabia?’ Yes, even Saudi Arabia, which bans women from driving, was rated better in a poll of gender specialists published by Reuters. They concluded that women were particularly vulnerable in India because of high instances of female trafficking, child-marriages, dowry related deaths and slavery.
The rapid modernisation and industrialisation of the last 20 years has created a new middle class and
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