Film: Filmmaker focuses on female infanticide
2005; BMJ; Volume: 331; Issue: 7507 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0959-8138
Autores Tópico(s)Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
ResumoAworld without women might sound absurd, but in parts of rural India, where female infanticide is on the increase, it might not seem such a distant scenario. The feature film Matrubhoomi, subtitled A Nation Without Women and set for general release in India this month, explores the hypothetical consequences of widespread female infanticide and, unsurprisingly, finds them devastating. Directed by the up and coming Manish Jha, Matrubhoomi is a horrifying tale of gender discrimination and violence against women in India. In one scene a man waits outside the family home while his wife is in labour. He gets excited by the birth of the child, but the mood changes with the announcement that it's a girl. The newborn is brutally killed, dipped into a large vat of milk. “Next year, a boy,” a gruff voice commands. In the near womanless world of Matrubhoomi, men seek to release their sexual desire through rape, pornography, homosexuality, and bestiality. Against this backdrop, a desperate family hunts down a pretty teenager, who is sold by her father at a good price. She is forced to marry five brothers, who, along with their father, repeatedly rape her. Only the youngest brother begins to grow emotionally close to her, but then he is murdered by the eldest brother. When the girl plans to escape with a servant from a lower caste the pair are caught. This triggers a caste war, and the teenager is chained up in a cowshed and gang raped by men from both the castes. When she becomes pregnant everyone claims paternity. Much more brutal than Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen, Matrubhoomi could be seen as providing the false sense of comfort that the film is a mere exaggeration. But it could also be regarded as a worrying reminder of the systematic infanticide that has plagued India for years. The killing of girl children has increased in the past couple of decades, thanks in part to illegal sex selection using ultrasonography, and it is thought that some doctors have promoted sex selective abortions (www.indiafemalefoeticide.org/technology.htm). Despite legal prohibitions, India's girl to boy ratio (aged 0-6 years) has declined from 945 to 1000 in 1991, to 927 to 1000 in 2001 (http://www.censusindia.net/data/chapter6.pdf). And in the north Indian state of Punjab, the ratio has declined from 875 to 1000 in 1991, to 793 to 1000 in 2001. While Matrubhoomi is clearly a cinematic exaggeration, the country's shortage of women has led to a rise in the abduction and kidnapping of girls, forced polyandry, gang rape, and child prostitution in various Indian provinces (www.indiatogether.org/2003/aug/wom-sexratio.htm).
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