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Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Coming up next week on the show, the stars have aligned to bring us a lot of really incredible guests. We have Danny and Lucy DeVito and art imitating life. They play father and daughter in their new Broadway play. Jacqueline Woodson has a new book out called Remember Us. She'll join us to discuss.

Stewart Copeland of the Police has written a new book about the band's formative years. He'll be in studio. Andrew Reynolds and Josh Gad from Gutenberg! The Musical and the stars and the director of the Broadway revival of Purlie Victorious will be with us. [unintelligible 00:00:44] will be here next week, too. It's going to be a great week. We hope you will join us for All Of It. That is in our future. Let's get this hour started with a new documentary called To Kill a Tiger.

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Before we get started, I want to let you know that this conversation will deal with sexual assault and sexual violence. If at any time you feel you need support, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. It is available 24 hours a day. A new documentary follows a family in rural India fighting for justice for their 13-year-old daughter who is gang raped by three young men after a local wedding. In the documentary, she's given the name Kiran. When Kiran stumbles home that night, she and her father, a farmer named Ranjit, decide to go to the police. The three young men are arrested, but the trouble is just beginning for this family.

Most people in the village don't support the decision to involve law enforcement claiming it should be resolved within the village. That resolution includes Kiran marrying one of her rapists. The families of the three young men are furious at the arrest. Kiran's family is shunned. The threat of violence looms over them daily, but Kiran never backs down. Documentarian Nisha Pahuja captured all of this on film, even getting caught up in village politics herself in her new film To Kill a Tiger. It premieres in theaters today. Nisha joins me in the studio. Nice to meet you.

Nisha Pahuja: Nice to meet you too, Alison. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: You wrote on Instagram that this film was originally intended to be an exploration of Indian masculinity. What was that initial vision of the film?

Nisha Pahuja: After the Delhi gang rape of 2012, I started to think that in order to really understand the headlines that were coming out of India that what was really important was to look at masculinity and how men are created and shaped in that culture. I started exploring the idea of making a film on Indian masculinity. I found an organization called The Center for Health and Social Justice. They're pioneers in the space of working with men and boys in order to create a new idea of masculinity for Indian men.

I began filming their work. They were starting a program in Jharkhand the state where I made this film, working in around 30 villages with men and boys. Over the course of filming their work with these men and boys, I came across the story of Ranjit, who was enrolled in one of their programs and this tragedy that had befallen his daughter and his family. I began to film their story as part of the spine of this piece that I was going to make on masculinity.

Alison Stewart: I think you still very much did make a film about India, about masculinity and how it can be perverted and morph and change into something really dangerous and toxic. How long did it take you to make this film? Just so we give people a sense of how invested you got.

Nisha Pahuja: The journey?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

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Nisha Pahuja: It was actually eight years. It took eight years to make the film.

Alison Stewart: How did you first approach Ranjit and his family about telling their story?

Nisha Pahuja: Literally, the very first scene in the film, which is Amit, the young man from the Srijan Foundation, an activist who goes to see the family, literally, that was just days after Kiran had been sexually assaulted. I wasn't sure what access I was going to get. I wasn't sure how much of the story I was going to be able to follow. It really was just follow the puck and see what we got. The family was really, really open and very, very amenable from the beginning.

Alison Stewart: What questions did they ask you before they said yes?

Nisha Pahuja: They didn't ask.

Alison Stewart: They just said yes.

Nisha Pahuja: They just said yes and I'll tell you why-

Alison Stewart: That's interesting.

Nisha Pahuja: -they said yes. I'll tell you why they said yes. They said yes because Ranjit is an incredibly intelligent human being and he understood very early on that the only way someone like him who comes from their Adivasi, so their tribal cast, their lower caste, they're impoverished, the only way that they were going to be taken seriously by the court system was if there was media following the story. He was very smart. They were always open because they understood what we could mean for them and giving them a certain kind of legitimacy.

Alison Stewart: Often with documentaries, you'd just film and film and film. You do the fly-on-the-wall thing. Did you have to alter this approach at all, considering the subject matter and the age of the girl who was raped?

Nisha Pahuja: No. We essentially just followed the story. The decision to actually show the survivor in the end was something that took years to realize. It certainly wasn't the initial intention. The initial intent was to not show her. When we were filming, I didn't want to film her using traditional ways of hiding identity because I didn't want her to feel that she had to be hidden because she should be ashamed of herself or I didn't want to perpetuate the kinds of prejudices that she was already facing. Our decision was once we get into post, we'll figure something out. She wasn't going to have as key a role as she does in the current iteration of the film.

Then once we were in post, and it took so long to make the film, and we realized that actually as you said, we were making a film on masculinity even if we just focused on this one story. By then she was an adult, so we asked if we could show her. After watching the film, her and her family agreed.

Alison Stewart: She is so quietly fierce in this film. The whole family seems extremely strong. There are times of weakness. There are times when her father just seems a bit beaten down. He admits he starts to drink a little bit too much. He goes a little absent from the process, the judicial process. From spending that much time with this family, what was the source of their strength?

Nisha Pahuja: Oh, each other. I would say it was each other, and I would say it was her. That's for me what is so powerful about her and the film, and the reason we wanted to not hide her. In so many ways, she's the moral center of the film. She's the one that is steadfastly demanding justice. That's really powerful coming from-- at the time she was 13, coming from a 13-year-old child, just knowing that she had the right to seek justice.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the film To Kill a Tiger. It is in theaters today. My guest is its director Nisha Pahuja. Nisha, just so people can get a sense of where we're talking about, where is the village located? What is daily life like in this village?

Nisha Pahuja: The village is located in Jharkhand, a state in India in a region called Bero. What is daily life like? A lot of people are farmers. They're farmers and a lot of them are also daily wage laborers, which means they fix roads, they build buildings. They're poor. Most of them are quite poor. That poverty creates a sense of community. What it does is it creates an ecosystem whereby everyone's survival depends on everyone else. For example, when Ranjit, if it was a bad crop for him, if he needed money, then people from the community would gather and they would ensure that the family didn't starve. That was part of why it was so difficult for them to take the step because their very survival depended on that social cohesion.

Alison Stewart: I'm curious about the village and the villagers. Excuse me. Are they isolated because of geography, or is it in some way a choice?

Nisha Pahuja: You mean the family?

Alison Stewart: No. Just the village itself. You were saying it was remote. Is it the idea of like, "We're a village and we're going to stay being our village, we don't really need outsiders?" Is that a result of almost cultural preservation to them or is it out of geography?

Nisha Pahuja: It's really just geography. That region of Bero, for example, is a collection of many villages. In those villages, I think Ranjit's village, the population was just over 2,500 or something. That area is just made up of a number of different villages.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting that you explained how everyone is interconnected because one of the big issues in the film is that the family starts to be shunned and then Ranjit actually faces a bit of scorn for what happened to his daughter. He even seems to be holding some guilt about allowing her to stay at this wedding which seemed safe to him and to her. Why do people hold him responsible in some ways for what happened to his daughter?

Nisha Pahuja: Right. Because India is a hugely patriarchal culture and the body of women, the body of girls, it's a contested space. It's an owned space. He was supposed to guard her virginity because that's where her purity lies. That's where her value lies. Because he didn't do that, he brought shame not only onto his family but also onto the village itself. That is his role as a man. He is the guardian of his daughter's honor.

Alison Stewart: Even though I described her as being very strong which she is, she clearly has suffered a trauma. I don't want to downplay that at all. She's been clearly affected. She's very quiet at certain parts of the film. She looks very lonely in certain parts of the film. What did you observe about her and what did her parents tell you about the changes in their daughter after she'd been attacked?

Nisha Pahuja: Definitely, it was obviously extremely traumatic experience for her. Deeply traumatic. She just stopped. Obviously what happened to her body and her soul was traumatizing. I think what made it worse was the fact that she was shunned, was the fact that people started to blame her, was the fact that all of her friends left her side. She had no one except for her family. I can speak in terms of what's happened to her now, where she's at now. She's now almost 20 years old, but I think it is very difficult for her to trust.

Obviously, it's very difficult for her to trust people and to confide in people. It's definitely impacted her in that way. That said, the reason she agreed to come forward is because she wanted to celebrate her strength, and she wanted people to see her. She wanted people to know what she had done, and she wanted other survivors to know that if she could do it, they could also do it. That was really important. It's really important for her. For me, I would say that that's her greatest-- That's really, I would say is what defines her right now.

Alison Stewart: Why would the villagers, both men and women, think that naturally, she would marry one of her attackers? That is their solution.

Nisha Pahuja: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What was the reasoning?

Nisha Pahuja: Well, clearly because it's happened before. Obviously, it's a solution that has been approached and it has happened before. They just figured it would be fine because it's been done in the past. I think because they don't understand the trauma of rape. They think of rape simply as an act of sex, as an act of, okay, she's just lost her virginity, she's lost her purity. They don't understand what that means, the implications of that emotionally, spiritually, physically, psychologically, they don't get it.

They don't see it in that way. For them, it was a very simple solution. Well, we can't marry her to anyone else. She's not pure anymore, so we'll marry her to the men who took away her purity or one of the men who took away her purity.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because, we'll get into it a little bit after the break, but this idea that it keeps being brought up that this is a crime, and somehow it doesn't penetrate that it's a crime. It's interesting that people keep saying it, and yet it doesn't really quite sink in. I found that to be really troubling to watch.

Nisha Pahuja: Yes. Absolutely. There's a moment. I don't know if we show it in the film, but there's a moment where the village ward member who has a tremendous amount of power where he says, "Look, there are the courts, there's the legal system, and then there's the justice that's meted out in the village. You can go ahead and impose these laws on us but the village law is supreme. The village law is paramount." As horrendous as that is, and as problematic as that is, and as clearly as that needs to change and is changing, from his perspective as someone who is in charge of keeping social harmony and cohesion, I understand where that thinking comes from. It's wrong and it's traumatizing and we have to stop it. I can see--

Alison Stewart: His logic?

Nisha Pahuja: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is To Kill a Tiger. It is in theaters today. I am speaking with its director, Nisha Pahuja. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It with.

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You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Nisha Pahuja. She's the director of the film To Kill a Tiger which is in theaters today. We do want to let you know that this conversation deals with sexual assault and sexual violence. If at any time you feel you need support, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, it is available 24 hours a day. In the film Nisha, we see that there's this group working to combat gender violence in India. It's a foundation. What's the goal of this foundation?

Nisha Pahuja: Well, many goals. One of the goals is actually, women's rights and gender justice but it looks at-- There are a lot of problems in India. [chuckles] There are many things that they look at but one of them is gender justice.

Alison Stewart: How do they think they can help this Kiran and her family?

Nisha Pahuja: With this particular program which had to do with giving men and boys a different way of being male, I think the reason they really wanted to support Kiran and her family in this specific instance is because they felt that the fact that this man was standing by his daughter was so exceptional and so rare in Indian culture that he could actually be a role model, that he could herald a really interesting sea change. For them, this case was really important, and they were very behind it. It was legal guidance. It was also moral support, and it was to really support them because they knew the obstacles that they were going to face. It was really to try to encourage them to stay the course.

Alison Stewart: There's a very interesting moment when one of the men I believe from the foundation is saying, we have to get the men on board. We have to get them to understand and he approaches and tries to talk to this group of men. What were you thinking in that moment when you're watching this go down? It's just a really interesting interaction because you can see some of the wheels turning but then at the same time people knowing what they know and believing what they know. It's a moment of-- I thought stalemate it's not the right word, but it was watching two ideologies bang up against each other.

Nisha Pahuja: Yes. It's really interesting. It's like this wall of silence and blank stares and yet at the same time, you can feel. You're not sure what's going on in their minds. You don't know if it's guilt. You don't know if it's shame and they're reflecting, or if they're feeling resentful, and who are you to come and tell us what to do and how to solve our problems? My feeling is that it was probably a combination of all of that. As human beings what goes on inside our minds is so complex. It's never just one thing or the other. I'm sure there were a multitude of reactions taking place internally with the men in that group.

Alison Stewart: There's a sense that the family could be in danger, that there could be violence put upon this family. It actually starts to happen to the film crew as well, to you. Obviously, you've been there over a long period of time. You keep coming back and there's this gathering storm against you and that you're part of this, and maybe you are putting these ideas in this family's mind. When did you first get a sense that this animosity was starting to build.

Nisha Pahuja: Really early on. Very, very early on. We tried to nip that in the bud really early on in the process of filming and many, many times actually. Of course, as it became clearer to the villagers that the family was not going to drop the charges, the violence and the tension just started to escalate. I still actually have a really great relationship with the ward member.

Alison Stewart: He's like mayor kind of.

Nisha Pahuja: Exactly. He was helping. He was trying to ensure that it didn't go off the rails. Interestingly enough, the day that it did, he wasn't in the village. If he'd been in the village, I think we wouldn't have experienced that. It was building and it had been brewing for quite some time. The fact that it happened wasn't a surprise. The response to it happening was-- it was a surprise when it actually happened. You know what I mean? We were expecting it. We were anticipating it, but when it actually happened, it was shocking. It was stunning. What do we do here?

Alison Stewart: Were you frightened?

Nisha Pahuja: Yes. Without a doubt. I was frightened.

Alison Stewart: You kept cameras rolling though.

Nisha Pahuja: We didn't. We did-

Alison Stewart: Then you stopped.

Nisha Pahuja: -and then we stopped. Interestingly, when we had talked about the fact that this could happen as a crew, we'd had these conversations for months, "Okay, well if this happens, what do we do?" Our plan was we stopped the camera, but we continue to roll sound. When it actually happened, I have to say, Alison, I felt so guilty and so full of shame like a bull in a China shop. Even though I really had done my due diligence, and I tried very hard to get the villagers to open up to me and to get them to feel that I wasn't taking sides. The fact that it did happen, I felt really awful about it, actually. At that moment, I just said, "Okay, we're just turning off everything. We're just turning off everything and we're going to go and have a conversation with the people outside."

Alison Stewart: How much longer were you in contact with the village after that?

Nisha Pahuja: That was it.

Alison Stewart: That was it.

Nisha Pahuja: That was it. Yes. That was it. We went outside, we managed to calm people down and then more and more men started to gather and then it started to become very potentially aggressive. The women in the village essentially walked us to our car, making sure that--

Alison Stewart: You got out safely.

Nisha Pahuja: Yes. That we got out safely.

Alison Stewart: I'm glad you mentioned the women in the village because I wanted to go back and make sure we talked about Kiran's mother and her role in this. I know that because this is a film about masculinity, that there's a lot of concentration on her father. What was her mother's role in supporting her daughter?

Nisha Pahuja: She was amazing. It's so interesting because I think everyone in the film regardless of who they are, even the ward member, everyone has an arc. With Jaganti, Kiran's mom, at the beginning, she's nervous. She said she makes that comment at one point, like do you think it was wrong that we involve the police? She's afraid. Eventually, as time goes on, because she is such a strong, determined woman. As time goes on, she becomes fierce. I think becomes a source of strength for Ranjit. I think what they did was, it went in waves. When Ranjit was feeling weak, she would prop him up. When she was feeling weak, he would prop her up. I think the consistent force in all of this was Kiran herself. I think her desire and her determination never wavered.

Alison Stewart: The court case took about 14 months. Why did it take that long and what does that length in context of other cases?

Nisha Pahuja: That's a really good question. The case should have actually, because it falls under something called the POCSO Act which is specifically guidelines around children, so minors. The case should have actually been over in six months. The fact that it took 14 is actually still pretty great. You know what I mean? Some of these cases languish for years. The fact that it was over in 14 months, 15 months.

Alison Stewart: Someone may be listening to this conversation. We've talked about the courts, we've talked about the parents, we've talked about the ward. What's the role of the police in a case like this?

Nisha Pahuja: Essentially, you saw in the film. The investigating officer it's really gathering evidence, talking to witnesses, gathering testimony, and then going to court and testifying, and then obviously filing what's called a first information report. In this particular case, in this story, obviously, the person in charge didn't do a very good job. That was definitely yet another obstacle that the family had to deal with.

Alison Stewart: How is the family doing today? Where is everyone?

Nisha Pahuja: They're great. Ranjit actually, I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago and he asked me if I could find him work with an NGO. I think the experience of going through this process, and I think of just being affiliated with the film and with the Srijan Foundation Foundation and [unintelligible 00:26:41] from the Center for Health and Social Justice, I think that experience has given him meaning. It's made him feel like he can contribute in a meaningful way to something. I think that's really wonderful.

She herself, she wanted to be a police officer so that's still something that she's pursuing and she's also pursuing higher education. I don't want to say that everyone's fine because you don't go through something like this and be okay. They're still extremely impoverished materially. Their fate hasn't changed, although that will definitely change just in terms of the work that we're doing with them and are determined to do with them. They're still that incredible unit that is very loving and very united.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is To Kill a Tiger. You can find out why when you watch the film. It's in theaters today. I've been speaking with its director, Nisha Pahuja. Nisha, thank you for coming to the studio and thank you for your work.

Nisha Pahuja: Thank you. If I could just say that the film is actually playing at Film Forum in New York.

Alison Stewart: Right around the corner. Thanks for coming in.

Nisha Pahuja: Thank you.

 

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