In the documentary, which was nominated for the Oscars, Canadian filmmaker Nisha Pahuja’s colonial gaze is bent on tailoring a narrative that would be more appealing to the West
Nisha Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger, the Oscar-nominated documentary on a sexual attack survivor and her father’s fight for justice, raises more questions than answers. The film opens with a caveat that suggests that the girl we are about to see is 20 years of age and has consented to show her face from the time she was 13. It concludes with more ambiguity with the filmmaker insisting that they decided to go forth with the decision after consulting several women’s rights activists in India.
These clarifications open up a minefield of questions — some legal and some ethical. In India, according to The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act 2012, revealing any information about a child rape survivor is prohibited. An exception can only be made if a Special Court competent to try the case decides that the child can benefit from the revelation. Pahuja seeks sidestepping this legal intricacy by putting the onus of the disclosure on the girl. But, as film critic Anna Vetticad asks in an illuminating essay on the documentary, “did she get a Special Court’s permission before filming the minor child?” — a query the Canadian filmmaker has resisted from shedding light on.
Then there is an ethical compunction in relation to the girl consenting to something that happened when she was underage, compelling us to initiate deeper interrogation: can consent be provided in retrospect? Can well-meaning activists, whom Pahuja claims to have consulted, decide for someone else? And more crucially, can a documentary filmmaker prioritize creative decisions over moral obligations especially when the people concerned, in this case a poverty-riddled family living in a village in Jharkhand, stand to be affected by it after the camera ceases to be on them?
The narrowing of the gaze
It is difficult to watch To Kill a Tiger and not wrestle with these questions. And it is impossible to witness the struggle of a family pursuing justice and not reckon with the subtext of Pahuja’s colonial gaze which is bent on tailoring a narrative that would be more appealing to the West. Take, for instance, the many times the filmmaker articulates the ingenuity of the situation at hand where a father has decided to stand by his daughter.
She says it aloud when someone in the village asks her the reason for filming them. In interviews, Pahuja has admitted that the fact that the father was supportive of daughter’s decision to seek justice is a rarity in India and does not happen at all. It is a misleading statement (in the same piece Vetticad effectively points out the 2012 Delhi gangrape incident where both parents of the victim stood by her) that culminates in curating the proceedings.
Pahuja focuses solely on the father, Ranjit, as he toils, self-doubts and yet perseveres to ensure that the perpetrators of the horrific crime, the three men from his village, are punished. The narrowing of the gaze sidelines the mother and overlooks the amount of courage she had to garner to overcome social conditioning and stand up to the people of her community who suggested getting their daughter married to one of the rapists as an easy solution. So taken is the filmmaker by the arrangement that she does not pause and acknowledge the agency the man possesses on virtue of his gender, however little but still more than his wife, that infuses his heroism.
To Kill a Tiger centres on a 13-year-old girl, Kiran (the filmmaker has changed her name to protect her while revealing her face), who was sexually assaulted by three men on the night of a relative’s wedding in 2017. She had come home late at night and told her parents who immediately filed a case. The rarity of something like this in a village in Jharkhand resulted in the villagers blaming the girl and the village head (mukhiya) siding with the boys.
Questions like ‘what was the girl doing so late at night with the boys’ and ‘did she forget that she is a girl’ were thrown around. Pahuja follows the family around and accommodates herself in the house. Much of the screen time is dedicated to Ranjit, the defeated father who struggles to utter the word “rape” and blames himself for failing to protect his daughter. Kiran arrives a little later, shy at first but always attuned to what happened to her.
What the body remembers
Pahuja also documents the involvement of Srijan Foundation, a Jharkhand-based NGO devoted to working for women and children, in the case. Several moments of the film include members of the organisation arriving at Kiran’s house, talking to her and her father, as well as actively partaking in the legal procedure, especially when Ranjit momentarily takes a back seat. It is an insightful inclusion that expands the notion of bravery, underlining its pluralist character even when it is understood in individual terms.
During the runtime, To Kill a Tiger includes a host of moments with divergent energies. We see the villagers getting antagonised towards Ranjit as his family for shaming the place (the film crew are forced to stop the operations), there are poignant instances of the parents discussing between themselves the implications of their stand as the father of one of the accused threatened to kill Ranjit. And then there are affecting scenes of Kiran and her father. She breaks down on seeing him helpless but their relationship turns out to be wonderfully symbiotic where each draws strength from the other.
The documentary concludes with a sense of triumph (all three accused were sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment by the Ranchi court in 2018; presently the matter is in the High Court) but not before halting at Kiran memorising her statement to repeat it in the court. It is an unsettling visual where the then 13-year-old can be seen mugging up what all the men did to her with the stoicism of a detached leader. Sitting next to her is Ranjit who eggs her on to be louder. The judge needs to hear her to rule in her favour.
The moment encapsulates everything that is rotten with the way the society treats women and disbelieves her by default till she pulls all stops to be believed. The scene lays bare that not only do women in India not have the luxury to forget but that they must remember with a vengeance and perform their remembrance with conviction.
Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger reiterates these with an inviting bluntness but in a country where the identity of a woman is almost always weaponised against her, the question we need to ask is not what the filmmaker achieved through her film. Rather, we need to look at the achievement and counter it with a single query: but at what cost?
