Delhi businessman's reply to 'India's Daughter' causes online stir

NEW DELHI: It claims to be an online riposte to Leslee Udwin's documentary, India's Daughter, and it is grabbing more and more eyeballs by the hour. 'United Kingdom's Daughters', a hastily-cobbled 28-minute video by a 60-year-old businessman from south Delhi's Lajpat Nagar has trended on Twitter in the past two days gathering nearly 89,000 views (by Friday 9pm). Newspapers Washington Post and Telegraph, UK have also carried online reports on the video, which was uploaded on March 9.

"When Leslee Udwin titled her film, 'India's Daughter', it made us all look like culprits. As a businessman, I have travelled the world, and was aware of the rape problem in the UK. So I made this video," Harvinder Singh told TOI over phone.

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The 28-minute video's description reads: "This is reply (sic) to BBC for making video on rape cases in other countries when they are them self (sic) at the 5th place in world's rape list (sic), to remind them daughter is daughter, she is not Indian or British & we have same pain for British too."

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An electronics engineer by training, Singh says he took just two hours to compile the video. The first few minutes furnishes various "statistics" like the UK being 5th on a "world rape list" and 10% women in the UK saying that they were sexually victimized. The data is not attributed to any source.

"I am not a professional. I found all this data on the internet," says Singh, when asked why he hadn't cited sources. The "rape list" for example, is from an "infotainment blog" called Wonderslist.

Singh points out data-based stories of sexual violence in the UK have also appeared in The Guardian and the BBC.

The video begins with a compilation of images and text slides followed by two videos from the BBC itself. The first is a part of a programme on sexual violence called "I Never Said Yes" which has an interview with a young rape survivor. The woman details her experience of the violence, the lack of help soon after, and the challenges of testifying in court. The second video is a panel discussion on rape culture.

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"I didn't expect it to get so many hits. It was about 5,000 yesterday and when I woke up this morning, it had reached 42,000 views," says Singh.

Leslee Udwin (R), director of the documentary 'India's Daughter' alongside her co-producer TV journalist Dibang (L) in New Delhi on March 3, 2015. (TOI photo: Chandan Khanna)

The response to the video has ranged from finger-pointing at the British to others saying it makes no sense to blame another country. There have been even others, lauding the fact that these programmes weren't banned in the UK. "Has UK banned this film? We are questioning the ban in India and not the film," says a YouTube comment from one Molshri Kohli. "If u think that India is the country with men who r misogynists, think again. Don't nationalize such social evils. United Kingdom's Daughters," says a tweet from @viveksurya.

"My point was to say that a rape is a rape. It doesn't matter if it is 'India's daughter' or 'UK's daughter'," says Singh, who shared the link to the video on Whatsapp with members of his Residents' Welfare Association, of which he has been an office bearer. "They also shared it further with their friends," he says.

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