“Writing With Fire:” Journalists on the Front Lines in India

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Next, we look at the documentary that “The Washington Post” is calling the most inspiring journalism movie maybe ever. “Writing with Fire” follows a fearless group of journalists from India’s most marginalized class, they are the Dalits. And their fight to maintain India’s only women-led news outlet. Five years in the making for the award-winning film makers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh. They join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the project and what it reveals about relentless gender and caste discrimination in India.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thank you. Rintu Thomas; Sushmit Ghosh, thank you both for joining us. Rintu, start by telling us the context in which this newspaper or website Khabar Lahariya works and why it’s so different that it’s run by Dalit women.

RINTU THOMAS, FILMMAKER, “WRITING WITH FIRE”: India’s news landscape is usually manned by or dominated by men and mostly dominant caste men. And most of our newsrooms, it’s dominant caste men who make decisions around what is the news that should be prioritized. So, you see a lot of mainstream media reflecting the priorities of that demographic of people. And when we zoom into a space like Uttar Pradesh, which could be a country in itself, the landscape rural media landscape again dominated by the same profile. And so, in these parts, to be a woman journalist, as a rural woman journalist were sort of unheard of and so what a couple of areas doing is breaking a huge glass ceiling both in terms of women as journalists as rural reporters but also Datil women who are realizing themselves, negotiating a seat at the table and putting out a newspaper, which is entirely independent and has a feminist lens. And I think for all those operated words, this is a unique news outlet.

SREENIVASAN: Sushmit, what drew you to this? I mean, this web site and this paper had existed before. How did they come to be in the first place?

SUSHMIT GHOSH, FILMMAKER, “WRITING WITH FIRE”: So, they were a social experiment really 2002 and NGO came in at the ground, said, you know, working with women in rural areas in Uttar Pradesh, what would your newsletter look like, was the brief for them. And essentially, these women for six months designed, co-created their own newsletter and ended up distributing it in the spaces that they were in. Once the ground ended, the NGO was pulling out, the women had tasted blood and there was this like, we wanted to continue. And some folks from the NGO and the women who are working at the newsletter eventually went on to cover the area, which became a newspaper. I think what attracted us was we caught this at a time where they were transitioning from print to digital. So, you know, the forces of patriarchy and the caste system are 3,000 years old and, you know, the unfettered energy and the power of the internet colliding anchored in the stories of Dalit women journalists in some of the most difficult parts of India to report from was a natural draw for us.

SREENIVASAN: I want to play a little clip here. This is a scene with Suneeta in it and she is coming over to cover a story about a road project that’s not happened. So, let’s take a quick look.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you here for?

SUNEETA PRAJAPATI: I’m —

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which channel? TV or print?

PRAJAPATI: Khabar Lahariya. We’re a newspaper and a channel —

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shouldn’t you demand a road —

PRAJAPATI: No. That’s not my demand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then get out of here.

PRAJAPATI: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don’t need you here. No one will believe that — media companies give their journalists —

PRAJAPATI: You have no idea about how we work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You should speak within — our only demand is that you print —

PRAJAPATI: Let me make something clear — absolutely not. We don’t take bribes — but you must be used to giving bribes. I don’t need a bribe to do my work. If the news is worthy —

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: What’s difficult for me to figure out is, is it harder being a woman, a Datil or a reporter? Because you can see that man, for example, turning around and saying, no, no, no. You know, should sort of know your place, or just speak — you know, speak with what you know about. And it was kind of definitely condescending to her. But what was fascinating was that she was in what would be, to any journalist, a sticky situation where she’s got sources who are — don’t find — certainly not welcoming of her, but she is negotiating this to get her story.

GHOSH: So, for context, if you’re Dalit, you’re at the bottom of India’s social hierarchy. And then, add to that the weight of being the Dalit woman, I don’t think it gets much lower than that. The journalists in Kabul area are the first women journalists in the region. And so, people are not used to seeing Dalit women with smart phones challenging them about accountability and budgetary, sort of like, you know, demands and essentially and enforcing some kind of transparency. They’re most used to having them ordered to clean their toilets. Historically, that’s how it’s been. So, I think the women have really embroidered a 3,000-year-old caste hierarchy on their — on its head just by picking up cheap Chinese smart phones, accessing the internet and delivering authentic news. People really want to see news and Kabul area delivering it. I think it’s a global phenomenon that more and more mainstream news networks are becoming sort of echo chambers. And over here, you have a platform like Kabul area that is actually giving you something that is authentic, that is real, and that is enforcing transparency. And you can see that in the film, roads getting built, hospitals access to health care, so on and so forth.

SREENIVASAN: Ringtu, essentially, men are — well, mansplaining what journalism should be or how these women should be, but I wonder how the community think about Khabar Lahariya and these women because they’re actually getting changes to happen?

THOMAS: You know, the women are very acutely aware that they’re moving in spaces where they’re not very welcomed, which are entirely — and sometimes, when we used to be filming, Meera and I, or the journalist and I were the only women in a crowded public space or a bureaucrat’s office and a politician’s office. It’s very visually, you know, you’re the only woman. And so, they are very aware of that. They’ve done this for 90 long years now. And their strategy is to get the job and leave. And if it’s in terms of interviewing skills, it means you’re going really, you know, intelligent and you go point by point. You point to the facts. And really, it’s a master class in seeing how to negotiate with people who you don’t necessarily agree with. And yet, get your story out because that’s the focus. And with male journalists it’s mansplaining or sometimes being a lot of condescension. And I think I love Suneeta for this because her — she’s got this really lovely comfortable relationship with the men, she jokes around with them, she’s really comfortable with the policemen. So, she gets her deeds done, hitches a ride with fellow male journalists. Sometimes might share a story. Mostly doesn’t. So, I think it’s really — she understands you accept that and then you transcend. I think that’s their strategy.

SREENIVASAN: I want to play a little clip here, it’s a teaching scene and I think one of the things that we take for granted is that the transformative capacity and capability of what a single smart phone can do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEERA DEVI: Find this. That’s the wrong one. “I” is the stick with a dot on it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But there are so many English characters.

DEVI: OK. Let me do a session on the English alphabet. I’m writing the Hindi pronunciation also. Yes, note everything down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: Rintu, tell us a little bit about Meera. We see her in the clip where she’s teaching folks, but what’s her story?

THOMAS: Meera was married at the age of 14. She loved studying. So, she fought to continue her study even after her marriage, even after she had her first child. And at that moment for her, it was not journalism. She just needed a job. And when she got to know about Khabar Lahariya are banding together, she joined them. And that financial independence allowed her to continue her education. She goes on to do her M.A., B.A. and MMA (ph) and she’s a very natural leader. She’s the person who was taking the whole organization on this new journey towards digital. And what we really loved about her is the sense of compassion and patience. As a boss, as a colleague, you know, never losing sight of the last person in the room who’s the slowest. And that’s really in an expansive way, the contribution of Khabar Lahariya. And the fact is that, to tell a woman who has nobody believing in her, that I believe in you, come along, we can go this far, is phenomenal, can have a phenomenal impact. And that’s who Meera really is and that’s what drew us to her.

SREENIVASAN: Rintu, what you do really well in the film also is show that while they’re doing this by day, that they’re going back to households and families who are still so deeply ensconced in the social structure that they have to navigate and negotiate things with their husbands, with their dads, on why they’re out late, why they’re doing this, whether this job is still worthwhile, right? So, like here’s the entire audience of the film watching this going, oh, my gosh. These are amazing women journalists. And here they are going back home and having to have these conversations to justify what it is that they’re doing and how.

THOMAS: This would have made me completely believe in something that I’ve always known that empowerment is actually a journey and not a destination. There are — and it is this negotiation that we were most interested in. And I think we were very fortunate to get this kind of access and trust of the women to be in their personal spaces. We were interested in seeing, if there’s a disagreement between Meera and her husband, how does she position herself? How does articulate her dissonance with what he feels? And what are the conversations that she’s having with her girls and with the financial independence that this profession allows them, these women are now decisionmakers in their families. And that’s the thing, right? We see women as service providers in our homes. But in terms of who they are, what their intellect is or what their spirit is, most of the times we are disconnected from that. I mean, I only discovered my mother much later in my life. For me, she was just like only a mother figure, not a person with a history. And this discovery is what we wanted to imbue the film with because we really hope when people watch this film, they’re able to imagine their mothers and sisters and wives and daughters differently, and that’s why this tussle between a woman who’s tasted freedom and independence and liberty and yet, feels connected to, you know, the pull of being a good daughter, am I being a good wife. And in some of them, like Meera, there is absolute clarity. Yes, I am spending all my day working hard, making sure I can send my children to a good English medium school. So, yes, I cannot spend time on their homework and that’s OK because I’m supporting them. So, that kind of clarity is really admirable also for me. It’s a lot of — I’m learning for me as well.

SREENIVASAN: Sushmit, there’s a lot of also what we would consider high- end journalism conversations about kind of the role of the press and what are the norms and what are the expectations and what is fairness and really, like, at the core in some ways, this is just as much of a story to me about democracy and freedom of speech, articulation. It’s so, kind of a universal, all the stresses that journalism is facing today about traffic and page views and everything else, they’re thinking about all of these things but they’re also thinking about the very core root of what it means to do this profession.

GHOSH: Yes. I think it’s also deeply linked to the cover letter Ethos where they believe in the values of equity, dignity, justice. And just this sharp understanding of what is news making supposed to be? And I think, more importantly, they’re a great example of what happens when you end up diversifying the newsroom. When news is not managed and controlled by middle age and upper-class men, but you have women from the other end of the spectrum reporting on what’s happening in the country and the lens with which and the politics with which they are bringing these stories out to the country. And you see that in scenes in the film. What is the meaning of an angle? From whose perspective should you tell the story? And just the ethics of moving through a space that has written its trauma or can be very hostile, how do you navigate and negotiate with people who don’t agree with you? It’s a classic example of a newsroom that should be studied by other newsrooms. It’s an example of what really news can be.

SREENIVASAN: Sushmit, this film opening up around the United States, but it has not yet opened in India and I wonder if — when you think about how it’s going to roll out, I mean, India since 2014, I think more than 40 journalists have been killed. It’s one of the toughest places to be a journalist and not everybody in the country is going to see that the work these women do as something to be celebrated, and I don’t know if that’s a conversation you’ve had with them or how you’re thinking about it, and do you — what do you think the reception is going to be in India?

GHOSH: We are hoping to bring the film back home to India next year. And I think that our positioning on this is, this is not anti-anything film, this is a pro-justice film, this is a pro-democracy film. And if you believe in those values, then you will align yourself with the message of the story, which is essentially, everyone deserves to live a life of dignity. And over here, the people who are spotlighting that are Dalit women. And these women are showing you what true journalism and what true courage really means. And for us, they represent really, the best that India has to offer the world. So, we must celebrate them. And that’s essentially the message. And we’re very hopeful that the Indian audience will absorb the story like that and celebrate the women at Khabar Lahariya the way they have been by people across the world.

SREENIVASAN: Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas, thank you both for joining us.

GHOSH: Thanks so much, Hari.

THOMAS: Thank you for having us.