|
By Huned Contractor Manish Jha's Matrubhoomi - A Nation Without Women, a futuristic story about a village with no women, has created a storm with its no-holds-barred presentation of female infanticide
 If entertaining audiences had been filmmaker Manish Jha's goal in life, he would not have dared to direct a film like Matrubhoomi - A Nation Without Women . He would not have been so unruffled either that more than 50% of the viewers have either walked out of each screening or else termed his work 'repulsive'. Because a feature film is not supposed to portray the truth. "Not even when it is fictionalised," says Jha, whose futuristic story about a village with no women has created a storm of sorts for its vivid and no-holds-barred presentation of female infanticide.
"The issue is for real but everyone wants to brush it out of sight. I was moved to make this film after reading a UNESCO report about 50 million women missing from India because of gender discrimination. This inequality in the men-women ratio led me to further research and I would have actually thought of making a documentary had it not been for producers who believed that a feature film would have a greater impact and stir the conscience of a nation that has come to accept this gory form of killing as something very normal," states 25-year-old Jha, who has had no formal training in filmmaking. His experience with the medium stems from working on television serials and a debut documentary titled A Very Silent Film about the homeless women in India which won an award at the Cannes film festival in 2002. Set in Bihar , Jha's home state, Matrubhoomi transports the situation into an undefined time zone, opening with a harrowing sequence of a newborn girl-child being ritually drowned in a cauldron of milk. Years later, there are no women left in the village and the men take recourse to homosexuality and bestiality to satisfy their sexual urges. This puts widower Ramcharan, a rich landowner, in a tight spot when he is forced to look for brides for his five sons. After much difficulty, the village priest spots the beautiful Kalki. In exchange for a large dowry, Kalki is married to all the five brothers. But not wishing to be alienated from carnal pleasures, Ramcharan takes pride of ownership along with his sons and together they mark out individual turns for sex through the week. But when the youngest brother Suraj displays a rather humanist side and treats Kalki as more than a flesh-and-blood doll, his father and brothers murder him. The distraught Kalki tries to escape but is captured and tied up in a cowshed. Enmity with a group of villagers results in a whole lot of people raping Kalki each night, unknown to Ramcharan and his sons. Eventually Kalki becomes pregnant and everyone claims paternity of the child. This leads to a violent altercation between Ramcharan's family and the villagers, leading to several deaths. In the midst of the fighting, Kalki gives birth to a girl. Another case for female infanticide? Jha leaves the question unanswered. Using the rawest elements of storytelling, Jha goes beyond the disturbing images of violence and defilement of women as shown in Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen or Digvijay Singh's Maya , both of which are about the hapless state of rural women in India . "Many people have pointed out that the repetitive scenes of rape could have been avoided. But it must be understood that the scenes are not there for titillation. We have often read or heard about cases where tribal or scheduled caste women have been raped by landlords and others to prove their supremacy. Truth, in such cases, is stranger than fiction," points out Jha. Edgy and provocative, Matrubhoomi received a standing ovation and the international critics' prize in Venice but displeased a section of viewers on home turf. "Viewers ought to understand that a filmmaker could overstate something to drive home a point. But there are villages in India where it has become difficult to find marriageable women, either because of dowry deaths or female infanticide. There is this phenomenon of missing women. Some of them might have run away to a bigger city to escape oppression. Some might have been murdered. To those who decry my film because of their admiration for India and its culture, I would like to ask, how do these awful things happen in a rich and noble culture?" says Jha. Quoting a Unicef report, Jha informs that in most countries of the world, there are approximately 105 females to every 100 males, while in India , there are less than 93 women for every 100 men in the population. The accepted reason for such a skewed sex ratio is the practice of female infanticide. "The problem is getting worse with scientific methods of detecting the sex of a baby and of performing abortions improving rapidly. The trend of aborting female foetuses is definitely on the rise," he adds. Jha is hoping that the nationwide release of Matrubhoomi will bring about a change in the situation. "First, there has to be collective awareness. Next, an intellectual debate. And that is to be followed by action. Hopefully, girls in patriarchal societies will also get a chance to live," says Jha. InfoChange News & Features, February 2004
|
