Filmmaker plans awareness drive across country, movie to be released in November.
Avantika Hari Agrawal was a student of London Film School in 2007 when a report about an honour killing in a British Asian family changed her life. The incident stayed with her and years later she turned it into a movie — Land Gold Women — based on honour killings in an Indian expat family in UK.
And before the movie hits cinema halls on November 25, on the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women, the director plans to launch a massive awareness drive across the country. “We will be tying up with NGOs and educational institutions and hope to bring about change in mindsets and also the legal system which does not treat honour crimes with the severity they deserve,” she says. Agrawal is also seeking to clear misconceptions about religion and its connection to violence against women.
Hari’s visit to Ashram — one of the biggest shelter homes in the UK for victims of honour crimes — was the inspiration for the film. “I met women who faced severe brutality just because they tried to break away from cultural restraints. After I heard them I felt it would be criminal not to do anything with their stories,” says Agrawal. The filmmaker feels that the social structure in most Asian communities and elsewhere in the world allows crimes against women to flourish. “The menace is more common than we think, across India, Pakistan, Brazil and Canada,” she says, adding that the Indian government needs to address the problem more firmly.
Recently, the outgoing chairperson of the National Commission for Women Girija Vyas had said that the bill against honour killing is likely to be introduced in Parliament in July. Prevention of crimes in the name of honour and tradition proposes severe punishment to those who order, provoke or commit honour killings by their kin for either marrying within a social group or outside a caste or religion.
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