TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081390/0813360.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 124 lines

                                                                                BEHAVIOR, Page 69

Romance and a Little Rape


The formula for a successful Indian film raises an outcry

By ANITA PRATAP/NEW DELHI


    A breathless silence falls on the packed New Delhi movie
hall that is showing the Hindi film Hum Se Na Takrana (Don't
Confront Me). As the predominantly male audience watches
transfixed, a scene shows two lusty sons of a rich landlord
cornering a pretty, well-endowed maid in their plush bedroom.
"Let me go," she implores, but the men's hands move toward her
writhing body. The camera heightens the suggestion of what is
to come without allowing the scene to become graphic; there is
no nudity, but there is plenty of screaming and leering. When
the deed is done, the audience lets out a barely audible sigh
of relief. Or is it pleasure? For Ashok Rawat, 28, a building
contractor, it is the latter. Says he: "Rape is enjoyable
because in men's fantasies force is the only way to get women
who are otherwise out of reach."

    Rawat is one of 15 million Indians who stream into movie
theaters every day to enter the fantasy world of the Hindi
cinema. The fare usually consists of song, dance, tragedy,
comedy and love -- all wrapped up in one film -- and for
several years a rape scene has been an all but requisite
ingredient. The billboards outside movie houses almost always
suggest a rape. Last year the posters for the English-language
film Crime Time carried the promise SEE FIRST-TIME UNDERWATER
RAPES ON INDIAN SCREEN.

    The prevalence of onscreen sexual assault is all the more
remarkable because censors in India are generally quite
prudish. Lovemaking and even kissing scenes are banned. Yet the
censors regard rape as permissible as long as the camera
conceals as much as it reveals. Says Vimla Farooqui, a women's
activist in New Delhi: "Rape scenes are used for an ugly kind
of titillation."

    Why is cinematic rape so acceptable and salable? Part of the
answer is that during the past decade, middle-class
theatergoers have been replaced by a rougher and more assertive
audience whose tastes encourage Hindi filmmakers to resort to
such exploitation. Another factor, observers believe, has its
roots in the fabric of a society in which most marriages are
still arranged and unmarried men even today have little access
to women, let alone romance or sex. Ranjeet, 44, the popular
Hindi movie villain who has enacted more than 350 rape scenes
during a 19-year career, explains the phenomenon in terms of
sexual deprivation. Says he: "Because people live in a
repressive society, they are sex starved. Filmmakers cash in
on this."

    Sudhir Kakar, a psychoanalyst and author of the recently
published Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality,
suggests that rape in movies is rooted in the Indian male's
strong bond with his mother in childhood. Rape, Kakar argues,
is a way of momentarily subjugating the all-powerful,
suffocating mother figure; hence the male delight at seeing a
woman in distress.

    In the West there is generally greater sympathy for rape
victims, at least in enlightened circles, whereas Indian
society more automatically assumes that the victim is somehow
responsible for what happens to her. The great Indian epics the
Mahabharat and the Ramayana have heroines who are nearly raped
but are protected from their assailants by the shield of their
virtue. In Hindi films as well, traditionally demure heroines
are invariably rescued at the last minute from male attackers.
But the same is not so for female characters leading more
independent lives, who are frequently portrayed as corrupt and
immoral. The attitude -- and the social response -- came
through clearly in Insaaf Ka Tarazu (Scales of Justice), a
Hindi hit. In the film a young fashion model and rape victim
is tormented at the trial of her rapist by lawyers and a
snickering crowd; they blame her emancipated life-style rather
than her assailant for the attack that she endured.

    Still, particularly among women's groups, there is growing
revulsion at the portrayal of rape in film, a reaction that may
find at least faint resonance in official sanctions. Bharatendu
Singhal, the recently appointed chairman of the Central Board
of Film Certification, has declared that he will force
producers to remove much of the titillation from the stylized
assaults. Says Singhal: "We will permit the commencement of the
assault, but the rest will be left to suggestion. There will be
no more scenes of a girl being molested and partially denuded."
Filmmakers are lobbying to remove Singhal from his post.

    One frequently heard explanation is that cinematic art is
merely imitating life. More than 8,000 cases of rape are
reported in India every year, but social activists believe this
figure represents only a small percentage of the real total.
According to India's Ministry of Welfare, half the registered
cases of rape involve tribal women and the untouchable, or
Harijan, caste; their poverty and lowly status make them
especially vulnerable to upper-caste men, such as rich
landlords. Says Uma Chakravarti, an activist in New Delhi: "It
is the landlord's way of reinforcing the humiliation of the
Harijans, of telling them that neither their land nor their
women are really theirs." When a 1980 strike in a textile mill
in the northern state of Haryana was broken, workers were
arrested and their female relatives molested by hoodlums.

    Nor does the Indian justice system offer much redress to
rape victims. In 1984 a mandatory 10-year sentence for two
policemen who raped a minor in their custody was reduced by
half because of the "conduct" of the victim: she waited five
days before registering a complaint with the police -- a
natural hesitation under the circumstances. Last year policemen
accused of raping 18 Harijan women in Bihar state were
acquitted; the judge felt that the women were so poor that they
could have been bribed to file a false complaint.