A girl explains how a gaggle of 4 males repeatedly broke into her home and raped her; six instances thus far. Did she go to the police? Yes, however officers refused to research. Instead, they threatened her and her husband. “These men can do anything. They can even kill us,” the sufferer says to the reporter, Meera, who’s filming on her smartphone. As Meera leaves, the girl’s husband tells her that she is their solely hope. “We don’t trust anyone except Khabar Lahariya.”
Khabar Lahariya is India’s solely all-female information organisation. Based in Uttar Pradesh, its journalists passionately imagine in reporting rural points via a feminist lens.
After interviewing the rape sufferer, Meera walks to the police station the place the officer in cost squirms, feebly making excuses for inaction on the case. Meera is filming him, so he can’t ship her packing – like his officers did the sufferer. This is grassroots journalism at its best: uncovering tales of discrimination and exposing abuses of energy.
What makes Khabar Lahariya’s success much more gorgeous is that the majority of its journalists – like lots of the odd individuals whose tales they report – are Dalits, the lowest standing in India’s caste hierarchy. Their state of affairs is very dire in rural areas resembling this nook of Uttar Pradesh, the place the organisation opened in 2002. It started as a short lived mission funded by an NGO to coach girls in a village to write down a e-newsletter. The thought was that their voices had been lacking from mainstream media; what would possibly their tales appear to be if somebody bothered to concentrate? When funding ended, the organisation lived on.
Now, Khabar Lahariya is the topic of a documentary, Writing With Fire, filmed over 5 years by the spouse and husband workforce Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh. Their movie options upsetting interviews with victims of violence, but it surely’s an inspiring portrait of a workforce of exceptionally proficient and dedicated girls. The movie-makers pitched up at the organisation in 2016 as Meera and her colleagues started transitioning from print to digital. The course of was notably troublesome in a newsroom the place some employees members had been semi-literate, and others had by no means used a smartphone.
Film-maker Rintu Thomas … ‘Somehow when Khabar Lahariya reports stories there’s a variety of sensitivity.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
The movie-makers had been shocked by the caste discrimination they noticed, says Ghosh. “We have been making films across India for 12 years together, but this was an eye-opener. You go into the interior heartlands, and you realise how structured and organised the practice is.” What them was seeing how the reporters, who’re doubly discriminated towards – first as Dalits, then as girls – took on techniques of oppression. “Men in positions of power are used to seeing Dalit women cleaning their toilets. They’re not used to seeing them with mobile phones, challenging them about accountability and governance. It stumps them,” he says with a smile. The group’s hottest YouTube posts have 8m hits.
Thomas provides that lots of the journalists have modified their surnames, which is usually a giveaway as to faith and caste. They are actually referred to as “Devi”, the Hindi for “goddess”. “It’s a generic word that women choose when they discard their caste identity. This is a caste-neutral term. That in itself is a very strong political statement to make.”
The movie focuses on three girls working at the organisation. Meera is the chief reporter. After marriage at 14, she insisted on ending her schooling, and gave beginning to her first youngster whereas nonetheless at college; her mom-in-legislation used to shout up to the classroom when the child wanted feeding. Meera is a well mannered however dogged interviewer of males in energy, and is compassionate in the direction of victims. She can also be a gifted chief who recognises that what typically holds again the girls in her newsroom is a insecurity. That’s the case with one rookie reporter, Shyamkali, a home violence survivor. “She would be nowhere in life were it not for Khabar Lahariya; no one would believe in her because she didn’t believe in herself,” says Thomas.
One girl not missing in confidence is Suneeta an bold younger journalist , who labored in an unlawful mine as a toddler. These days, her protection of the organised crime gangs that run the mines is usually picked up by nationwide media retailers. Suneeta is humorous and fearless. “Stop patronising me and give me an interview,” she snaps at a person who mocks her for arriving on foot, reasonably than by automobile, at an accident the place miners have been buried alive.
“Suneeta is amazing, sticking it up the system, and she’s so courageous,” says Ghosh. In one scene, the movie demonstrates the distinction between the Khabar Lahariya strategy and that of their male counterparts in the mainstream media. Suneeta arrives at a homicide scene the place a lady has been killed with an axe, allegedly by a gaggle of males. She crouches down on the floor, at eye degree with the sufferer’s husband, and gently interviews him. A few male journalists buzz round, debating whether or not to recycle a script from a homicide package deal they did the earlier day to get the story out shortly.
Sushmit Ghosh … ‘Suneeta is amazing, sticking it up the system, and she’s so brave.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
India is one in every of the most harmful locations on earth to be a lady; a rape is reported each 15 minutes. “Somehow when Khabar Lahariya reports these stories there’s a lot of sensitivity,” says Thomas. “A lot of times a rape is reported on as an isolated crime, but the Khabar Lahariya line of inquiry is that there is gender-based violence and a lot of times caste is included. Most importantly, they want to foreground the woman.”
Many victims of rape don’t go to the police. Perpetrators threaten households, and even kill their victims. In the areas the place Meera, Suneeta and their colleagues function, that’s altering, says Thomas. “With the coming of Khabar Lahariya, women have found confidence in sharing their stories. These journalists are making sure that cases are reported. They hold people accountable. There is an understanding that it’s not going to just go unnoticed.”
Khabar Lahariya sees its position as greater than merely writing tales – it has an ethical duty to give a voice to the unvoiced. So, the editorial coverage requires journalists to comply with up each article after 4 weeks. If no motion has been taken by these in authority, they write a follow-up story, tagging district officers on social media, creating noise. It’s a mode of forcing accountability that will get outcomes. In the movie there’s a punch-the-air montage of the paper’s biggest hits: electrical energy coming to a distant village; colleges constructed; roads surfaced. Its reporting has additionally led to males being arrested and jailed for rape.
Airing uncomfortable topics is one in every of Khabar Lahariya’s largest achievements, Thomas believes. “In Indian society, you don’t talk about things that bring shame to the family, shame for yourself. So the consensus is: let’s hush it up. We need to reconsider whose shame [it is]. And that’s what the feminist lens is; you’re able to think differently from the way you’re trained to think by your family, your community, your society. That revolution of thought is penetrating very slowly in the areas Khabar Lahariya is working.” The girls additionally report on menstruation and intercourse employees. “These are words no one wants to hear. Men are like: ‘Why are you talking about this?’ But having these conversations will take us forward as a society.”
It is exhausting work. A typical day for a journalist begins at 5am, travelling by practice, bus or rickshaw – their finances doesn’t stretch to vehicles. The ultimate leg of the journey is often a two- or three-hour stroll. In summer season, temperatures in Uttar Pradesh can hit 40C (104F). It’s additionally harmful, says Thomas. “They’re playing with fire every day. Asking those uncomfortable questions in that region is very risky.” Ghosh nods. “Just last month, a male journalist was killed because he was covering a story on the mining mafia in Uttar Pradesh. That’s how dangerous it is.” The girls have acquired loss of life threats, and had mobs flip up at their houses. The shift to on-line has led to relentless social media trolling.
Interviewing topics for Khabar Lahariya. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Ghosh talks about the activism in the wider Dalit group. “Just as there is a Black Lives Matter movement, there is Dalit Lives Matter. You may be a young Dalit scholar sitting in southern India, but on Twitter you have a following of more than 50,000 people.” He mentions the current Isabel Wilkerson guide Caste: The Lies That Divide Us, which attracts a comparability between racism in the US, the caste system in India, and Nazi Germany. “I see more and more conversations centred on the Dalit movement, and the importance of being aware of your own privilege as you move in these spaces.”
Thomas and Ghosh had been gutted when the premiere of the movie at Sundance was moved on-line due to Covid – it received the World Cinema viewers prize for greatest documentary. They had been determined to deliver the movie’s trio of reporters to the pageant, says Ghosh. “They should be up on stage handling the audience’s questions. And we wanted them to see the audience telling them: your work is amazing.”
For the movie-makers, the girls of Khabar Lahariya characterize 21st-century India. “They symbolise the quintessential modern Indian woman, not just a modern Indian Dalit woman. They are going into places that are unprecedented.”
Writing With Fire screens at the Sundance movie pageant in London on 1 August, with regional screenings from 30 July.
