The article, “ >India’s abandoned daughter ” (March 11), has a fair point in stating that the heinous act of rape is inconsequential in comparison with the tarnishing of India’s image.
The most shocking part in the supposedly “banned” documentary was the attitude and the mentality of the convict and the defence council. Who or what gives them the right to judge the decency or otherwise of another person? What rights do they have to inflict such pain on another person? Unless the mindset of the typical, Indian patriarchal society changes, incidents like these are bound to happen. Till then, Indian women have to take steps to ensure their own safety.
Sonal Garg,Faridabad, Haryana
The world is looking at us to see how we have dealt with the issue after the gruesome incident. T Though we claim to be modern, we still follow a strong, deep-rooted Indian culture. Separately, crimes such as acid attacks and rape are on the rise. However, these crimes have nothing to do with our culture and should not be misinterpreted worldwide as Indian values. The fallout of the controversy surrounding the documentary shows that exemplary punishment needs to be thought of in the justice system along with a faster trial process. At the same time, the mindset needs to change as far as accepting the freedom of a woman in society is concerned.
Pankaj Mohanty,Varanasi
Shiv Visvanathan needs to be complimented for his insight into the deeper meaning of Ms. Udwin’s documentary. It could be like any modern-day “intellectual” film which tries to generalise a mortal’s actions and attitudes into an expression of a cultural phenomenon without bothering to find out what this culture is about. It is intriguing that he does not pause to subject the film-maker’s conclusions to scrutiny. Does he not recall that the December 2012 incident shocked everyone? When this is the case, how can he say that protests are meant for political initiation, or that lawyers are simply promulgating Manu’s views? Ms. Udwin established superficial equivalences in order to mock at a culture and to show it as being a male-chauvinist and female-inimical culture. A genuine Indian would be outraged by this.
Codadu Pratap,Hyderabad
The articles by Shiv Visvanathan, and R.K. Raghavan (“Anarchy without a mask,” March 11), present the grim sides of the same problem. The lawyers who are handling the case of the Nirbhaya culprits have no hesitation in saying that there is a right and a wrong place for a woman. It would be interesting to ask them to explain this. What is a woman to do when she is perfectly and modestly dressed at her workplace and still faces harassment from a colleague or her boss? Do they mean to say a woman has no other choice but to be at home? What about other members in the family who could molest a woman who is at home?
Sheela Chandrachudan,Bengaluru
