would we see the same equality? or is there one rule for one gender and another for the other.

Anbother point is what if her husband was suffering from mental illness and wasnt diagnosed. Then what Alhuwalia did was more henious than we know.

Bottom line is Kiranjit Alhuwalia is an evil murderer who has been hailed as hero by twisted feminist extremists. Those who support her activities should be ashmhed of themselves and might I suggest locked up for twisted logic.

Agreed, but the system is currently more stacked against women than men when rape is concerned right. So please stop casting a shadow over campaigns that try to highlight such injustice.

And I’m a woman myself, so I’m not trying to imply that women are liars or anything equally absurd.

I know, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think carefully about what you say incase its used to justify more discrimination against women.

I was just speaking to the possibility of the system being taken advantage of some people in the future. It can get ugly.

Let’s be honest about what? Your attempts to portray women as simply taking advantage of the system against men? What exactly are you implying here?

Remember when all a woman had to do was SAY she was raped and an innocent man would be jailed for years of his life for it?

Er, no. Remind me again, when was this? Because as far as I remember it has always been the case that in a court of law one had to prove this to be the case and the law has always been about innocent until proven guilty. However more recently have courts been more accomodating of women who have been raped and find it difficult to provide evidence, or of providing the right support to women who have been raped (access to women officers for example).

Who’s to vouch for the dead man that the woman was being really abused or not?

In the court and other places there are reports by doctors and others who testified to finding bruises on her body and evidence of violence. The fact that she was abused is not under contest.

So yes, you are talking rubbish.

“She received no help from his family – Deepak threatened them if they ever intervened.
Over the years, Ahluwalia bore two sons, who often witnessed the violence”- from Ms Bindell’s article.
The attitude of the police and other authorities,

I was watching an interview with Kiranjit the other day and i’m sure she said there were hospital reports filed at several different times about the bruises she had – however the film didn’t really make any of this very clear at all… like i have said already i don’t think they really told her story well enough.

As for Aish – this film was not about HER life story and yeah so she’s managed to pull a minority ethnic crowd, there is nothing to say that a film without her would not have done the same….i can’t see the film being a long term runner just on the basis that she is in it.

… let’s be honest, now days girls from back home are much more empowered than they were 10, 20 years ago.

Sunny I have people in my family whom I encouraged to leave because they weren’t being fairly treated. So don’t talk to me about resources and encouragement.

As far as condoning, how could you say it’s rubbish? Let’s for a second think about long term affects of this so called rule. Remember when all a woman had to do was SAY she was raped and an innocent man would be jailed for years of his life for it?

Who’s to vouch for the dead man that the woman was being really abused or not? Did Kiranjit ever file a report against her abuser?

I agree with you on one point that the girls from back home are not empowered enough to get themselves out of these types of situations. But c’mon, lets be honest now.

True, but I do believe this is an issue most Asians need to confront more.

I sort of agree with you but i think in the hands of another director they might have at least been covered a little better.

“To that extent the message has been somewhat muted but at least it’ll get to a wider audience.”

I think it is good that the issue will be talked about as a result of the film however I’m not sure the message will get to a wider audience. I think there will be a whole load of Asian people (which was the case in the cinema yesterday) who go to see it because they know Aish is in it. I don’t think it has been very well publicised beyond the Asian market and if you look at the cinemas it is showing at majority of them are in predominantly Asian areas. Considering that domestic violence isn’t an ‘Asian-only’ problem that is a real shame.

I sort of agree with Clairwill. But I’d agree completely that the panoply of state protection should be given to anyone, and I mean anyone, resident in the UK. On a previous thread, where we were talking about citizenship lessons, which seemed to be a one way street about accepting warm beer and spinsters going to church on bycycles, I suggested it would be more to the point to be telling folk what legal and social protection they could expect if things went pear shaped. We have a clear duty, as moral actors, to not only provide legal aid and refuge to women in this situation, but also to make sure they are given contact information, etc. Language skills would be good too.

I can well see how someone that much a stranger in a strange land might think their only recourse is murder, or manslaughter, if you prefer. It is better to have them understand the options.

This is rather simplistic. I don’t condone murder, but a woman who has come over from India without her family, cannot speak English properly, has no one to turn to, and is abused over an extended period of time, cannot so easily run away and solve her problems.

There are plenty of reasons why they don’t run away. When I was being interviewed on BBC Asian Network on the day of my documentary, about abuse of women from South Asia, a British Asian woman called in and said she was still afraid to run away from her husband (she didn’t suffer physical abuse but did suffer verbal abuse). She was only 28, but still did not have the confidence to run away and start divorce proceedings even though she admitted she hated her marriage and was restricted in doing lots of things.

Just saying she could have easily run away is to ignore the realities many of these women are in, and the fact that they may lack the confidence and resources to run away.

For anyone to snap and end up killing her husband is not condoning murder (Kiranjit still spent 3 years in prison) but accepting that in certain circumstances some leniency should be shown. That is what a jury is for.

This ‘condoning murder’ argument is rubbish.

Gurpeet – that is fair criticism. I think because I expected it to be much worse (Jag Mundhra is a semi soft-porn director after all!) I came out thinking it was not as bad as I expected it to be.

I don’t think he was really that interested in exploring all those aspects you mentioned, but then it’s actually quite difficult to explore all those differenct facets in detail. Mmmmmm… it’s not a film to change the world… but a real life story, worth telling, dressed up as entertainment. To that extent the message has been somewhat muted but atleast it’ll get to a wider audience.

William – I saw Water last month and it is excellent. Waaaaay better than Provoked. But then Deepa Mehta has always been fantastic. And Lisa Ray shone too.

I expected it to be as good as a BBC series (at least) but was severely disappointed! Aishwarya Rai was not good -and yes I have seen Devdas and just because she works well in theatrical Hindi cinema does not mean she is a great actress- anyways Aish was the least of the films worries. It was badly acted and directed in my opinion.

nothing was dealt with properly – there was no real sense of how much she had gone through I felt, also I think the whole issue with the mother in-law and how some people turn a blind eye to the obvious abuse (which is possibly more-so the case in Asian culture due to the whole ’shame’ thing) was touched upon but not really dealt with in much depth either. I felt that lots of points were raised and then nothing was ever followed through….and as a result the film failed to have a real impact.

The film lacked direction and I don’t understand why or how that can have been the case, when the story was all laid out. It kind of started as if it was going to be a diary and then it wasn’t and then it was a semi-courtroom drama and then it wasn’t quite that either. It was like watching a film half way through because it seemed you already knew lots about Kiranjit and understood her situation and there became more about how she came to terms with being in prison and away from the culture she knew rather than how she dealt with her abuse and came to a point where she could take no more…which I think should have been more of the focus.

I am kind of annoyed more than anything because I think there has been a real missed opportunity.

Ha! Would it heck. He’d be laughed out of court and right into prison. I can fully appreciate why someone would kill at the end of a period of abuse (male or female). I’d be quite happy to see a reduced sentence for the killer in cases of this kind. We are talking a about grown woman here, not a helpless child. She could have decided that enough was enough and walked out. She did not and instead murdered her abuser. No great loss but unless I’ve missed something we, as a society don’t tend to condone the death penalty for domestic abuse.

No she can’t and I speak as someone who wasted 30 minutes of her life watching that excruciatingly boring film, umrao jaan, just a few days ago. I might take my chances on a typical bollywood sing-and-dance where Rai is simply gorgeous scenery but not a movie like this.