DIRECTORS UNCUT
It’s a first for filmmaker Anurag Kashyap. He is presenting his first non-fiction film directed by Nisha Pahuja. Pahuja is a Toronto and Mumbai-based filmmaker, best known for her films Bollywood Bound and Diamond Road. This is their first joint venture and Kashyap has chosen a feminist perspective to begin with. The film, The World About Her, is set in the Miss India contest in Mumbai, and follows a contestant, Ruhi, back to her origins in Jaipur, marking her journey from small-town India. It alternates her training for the contest with that of Prachi, a young woman enrolled in Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of RSS. While Ruhi believes the Miss India contest is her escape from conservatism, and the path to India’s progress, Prachi believes the nationalist camp, which teaches young women to defend themselves, rescues India’s future from the clutches of modernity. By following their paths, the film explores both the Left wing and the Right wing ideas of freedom and empowerment for women. To Kashyap, “Gender is a weapon today”, and organisations like Durga Vahini or contests like Miss India offer cultural crutches that exacerbate this “faux feminism”. To Pahuja, there is an equal empowerment on the Right as much as on the Left. The directors spoke to Senior Editor GAYATRI JAYARAMAN: Q. Why do you focus on extreme womanhood, beauty pageants to militant nationalism? Anurag Kashyap (AK) I come from a small town. I’ve seen these girls. There’s one kind of woman whose self-worth is derived from being beautiful, because that’s the pressure society imposes on you. The other has so much anger with the patriarchal society that she believes violence is the way to be strong. There is an absolute parallel between these two. Nisha Pahuja (NP) I was trying to understand the significance of pageants.
Should we see them as feminist? I started to read about the opposition to the contests. It was clear that the woman’s body was becoming the site of a conflicting nationalism, which held conflicts of both Indian identity and India’s future. It’s extraordinary that we are at a point where issues of women’s rights and Hindutva are being raised politically and you can see that clash occurring again. Q. Is it fashionable to be feminist in the film industry? AK I am an absolute anti-feminist. NP What does it even mean? AK For me the whole idea of feminism is itself a false empowerment. The people I’ve seen to have the healthiest relationships are not feminists. Feminism also comes from the need to assert yourself because you’ve not learnt how to. So what happens is even being a woman becomes a weapon. Gender becomes a weapon. Q. Prachi, the woman in your film, typifies the woman leaning towards the masculine in order to be empowered. Is there an erosion of the woman’s identity? NP For that, we need to ask ‘What does it mean to be a woman?’ AK It exists but the counterpoint also exists. The whole excitement is in the conflict. It shapes you. That natural way of growing is gone today. We have become so protective that we constantly need to prop up a false sense of empowerment. Let people be and empowerment will come from within. NP But we have to provide the structures for that empowerment to begin. AK My whole argument is, why are we so dependent on the system? NP Everything you go through is part of the process. There is a philosophical underpinning in the film. Q. You have looked at the Right as well as the Left. Any specific reason? NP It became very clear after filming that they weren’t different. They were not regressive. They were being taught a certain kind of belief system that had strengths and issues. Everything is part of a continuum. Everything is part of us. There is a natural progression that is part of us. This is just it. The chaos just is. It is what India is going through right now. It is a necessary part of evolution.