I grew up in the old-fashioned southern city of Hyderabad in India, in the eighties. I was born into a liberal family and quickly came to realise that the world outside was not a reflection of my family’s values. There were invisible rules in the real world that gave more freedom to boys and less to girls. The rules for young women, mostly as an excuse for their own safety, did not apply to men.

Women had a curfew, they could not be seen walking with men unless they were married to or in some way related. Women were trained to clothe themselves keeping in mind the “male gaze”. Riding behind a man on a motorcycle was seen to be sexual, unless married. If you were to ride with a male friend, there was a certain distance that needed to be maintained on the seat and certain decorum to be followed. Show of affection in public between the sexes was taboo.

While young men and women on college campuses enjoyed some freedom, in public spaces they had to adhere to a different set of rules. The separation was subtle and permeated through the culture as a code.

As a teenager, I recall stories of my sisters being harassed for wearing jeans or being too “western”. My older sister gained notoriety on college campus for once slapping a man on a bus who tried to grope her. She was brave but also fearful of reprisals and always sought protection of her other male friends as a result. I also remember my sister being shot on her arm with an air gun while walking down a street, a victim of someone’s twisted idea of fun. I experienced harassment from the police in my youth first hand, when I was out with my girlfriend past curfew time. It was 9:30 pm and we were sitting by the lake talking and a police van pulled up. The questioning by the police constable was direct. Who was this girl to me? Was she my sister, wife etc.? If not I was breaking the law. Confronting him was dangerous, so we had to scurry. Life in most cities in India was comparable, but there were some exceptions.

Some things have changed in India since my time, but others have not. Women in India still feel harassed and preyed on. In cities like New Delhi, they fear for their safety after dark. Today more and more women work the night shift in call centers across India servicing the West. Bringing them home safe is a task all companies take seriously. More women in urban India are financially independent, and therefore ambitious and are challenging the established norms, demanding freedom and equal rights.

This is causing a seismic shift, as traditional mores are challenged and families are forced to adjust to the winds of change. At times when that adjustment is resistant, it leads to violence and shocking human behaviour, like acid throwing and honour killings.

The predicament of Indian women suddenly came into sharp focus in December, 2012, when two students boarded a bus after seeing the film, Life of Pi. What happened next shook everyone to his or her core. The man was brutally beaten and the woman was gang raped by six men, one among them a 17-year-old. They were then discarded like trash on a dark New Delhi street to fend for themselves. The woman was badly mutilated and later succumbed to her injuries.

As the details of her ordeal emerged, the nation was enraged. The youth protests in the capital sparked pitched battles with the police, the city was on edge. To calm things down, the rapists were caught in a record 17 days and the case was “fast-tracked” to sentence them to death. The juvenile rapist was sentenced to three years, as that is all the law could deliver. New laws were quickly passed to make punishment for rapists more severe than they already were. The story of the victim and her parents captured the imagination of the public and there was an earnest push for some tangible change.

This month to commemorate International Women’s day BBC planned to air a documentary titled India’s Daughter across India, United Kingdom and elsewhere. The film began to attract controversy before its broadcast, as graphic excerpts were released to the press. India’s Daughter is an hour-long television documentary, constructed in the “true crime” genre that meticulously re-imagines the December 2012 rape and murder of Jyoti Singh.

Through interviews of her parents, a friend, one of the rapists, his lawyers and other experts associated with the case, the film walks the viewer through a sequence of events as they occurred on that dreadful night to a young woman who we learn was filled with dreams, aspirations and a zest for life. For the first time in two years the name of the victim is revealed and the harrowing nature of her trauma is laid bare on the screen for all to digest. What caused most controversy was not the telling of her tragic story, but the lack of remorse exhibited by the rapist who candidly expressed his motives and rationalised his actions. The egregious mindset of his attorneys, who openly blamed the victim for her misfortune, was more shocking. But what was most unnerving was the Indian government’s decision to trample on its citizen’s rights, by calling for a ban on the broadcast not just in India, but the world.

In the days of the Internet, a hope to achieve this was folly. What they instead accomplished was exactly the opposite.

India’s Daughter is not exhaustive in its purpose, intent or treatment. It is not a film about “rape” as a social evil in the context of India. It is not an in-depth investigation into this subject matter with all its nuances and does not pretend to be so. It is only interested in telling this particular story in the way that it happened. But by telling this singular story in gruesome detail, it hints and reveals very effectively how rape is a horrific social evil and how its perpetrators come to be formed. It puts a human face on the monster. It shows how poverty, destitution and a lack of education and an unhealthy family structure, can lead to a total collapse of humanity. The rapist’s lack of empathy reveals the true nature of crime, both internal and external. By listening to the rapist we come to learn, how when men come of age without structure or a space for healthy sexual interaction and expression can become deviant. As a result, the rapist believed and continues to believe, that the purpose of a woman is to serve a man’s libido – that is all. The seventeen-year-old juvenile rapist is a victim of his fate. His family was so destitute that he had to run away to live in the city slums, making a living amongst deviant men. When his family was informed about his crime, they had not heard from him in three years and presumed he was dead. Monsters are created by society, but that does not give them impunity to commit crime, but it should make us pause and think and respond in a knee-jerk fashion as we have witnessed in the media and on online diatribes making a case for the film’s demise.

While the documentary is set in India and is about an Indian crime, it in no way makes assumptions that this is an Indian problem alone. It definitely makes the assertion that it is a “male” disease.

I live in New York City now, with my wife and two daughters. There is no denying, women I have known, including my wife, who have moved here from India, feel a sense of liberation. My 17-year-old takes the subway everyday to school and while you see women ontrains alone at all hours of the night, you also see women being whistled, honked, heckled at and lewdly approached. I am sure my daughter has been at the receiving end of some if this diseased behaviour. While my daughter does sometimes have to deal with this, in no means does she feel unsafe.

Most women who live here, feel rather safe in one of the largest cities of the world. But rape in America is a reality one cannot shy away from. A misogynistic culture is pervasive in the media. Over sexualised movies and books, such as the world wide smash hit 50 Shades of Grey (which was incidentally banned in India), while asserting they empower women, also spread a deviant and skewed image of what women want and desire. The abhorrent extent of rape in the American military was documented powerfully in the film The Invisible War. Women being treated as mere disposable sex objects in rap music as “bitches”, is widely prevalent in the youth culture of America. The statistics on the phenomenon of “date rape” on college campuses is frightening as one in four women, will be a victim of sexual assault before she completes her academic career. But in America, these issues are largely openly discussed, confronted and attacked.

Films are made, books are written and information is freely exchanged for all to make up their minds. If India wants the world to see it as a modern democratic developing nation, then it really needs to look at how it deals with issues of free speech and expression.

Laws cannot change values, but they can scare people into behaving when enforced. The only way I can teach my daughter to navigate the difficult world, is by giving her the tools to make the right choices and hope that she makes them. Even if she makes the right choices, I am aware that as a woman she will be at a disadvantage. But for her to begin to make the right choices she needs to have full access to all information. Censorship does damage to all our daughters and our sons.