There had been so much hype about supposed sensationalisation in the run-up to the BBC 4 documentary India’s Daughter , broadcast in Britain on Wednesday, it had been brought forward from Sunday because of “the intense level of interest” that I had to steel myself to watch it. But the programme I watched was anything but sensational. It was painful and it was unnerving, but it was also sensitive and inspiring.
While publicity in the run-up seemed so suggest that India’s Daughter focused on the rapists convicted of the brutal rape torture and murder of Nirbhaya, the 23-year-old student in New Delhi in 2012, the documentary really hinges on Nirbhaya and her family. Indeed, the interviews with her parents, Asha and Badri Singh, structure the narrative and hold the documentary together, as they bring their daughter vividly and movingly to life. Their recollections of Nirbhaya are painful to watch – her father remembering her curious mind and the millions of questions she asked him as a little girl, or her ambition as a young woman to build a hospital in her village - but they create a powerful picture of a compassionate young woman who had everything to live for.
Asha and Badri Singh come across as dignified, articulate, progressive people who were willing to do whatever it took – sell ancestral lands, face the disapproval of relatives - to help Nirbhaya meet her dreams. And for them gender never came in the way of doing all they could.
Sensibly, the documentary steers clear of having an editorializing narrator, there is no need for one. The chilling interview with convinced rapist Mukesh Singh, who speaks without contrition and with a certain incredulity about his position, and what he calls an “accident” is made all the more powerful, interspersed with Asha and Badri Singh’s narrative. While Mukesh’s attempts to justify what happened (“it takes two hands to clap,” he tells the camera) are indeed shocking, the interviews with the defence lawyers are what really stand out. Their views on women and women’s place in society (“If you take a diamond on the street, the dog will take it out”, “in our culture there is no place for a woman”) provide a powerful reminder of just how firmly ingrained such attitudes are across society, including in supposedly educated circles.
The programme also delves into the background of some of the convicted rapists and their families – we see the poverty and deprivation that form the backdrop to their lives but never for a moment do you feel it is an attempt to justify or excuse.
Of course there is always more that a documentary could do given an infinite amount of time – it could have spent more on exploring the international context and the global nature of rape and sexual abuse. But the documentary is not a story of the rapists, it is a story controlled by those who wanted to celebrate the life and mourn the death of Nirbhaya and those – her parents included, who remain hopeful that her story will continue to push for change.