Harjant Gill

[The Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) brings you the sixteenth in a series of “Peer-Reviewed Article Reviews” in which we present a collection of journals and their articles concerned with the Middle East and Arab world. This series will be published seasonally.

Having spent the first half of my life in India and the second half in the United States, I am often uncertain of which label to use while categorizing myself: Indian-American, an NRI, a first-generation immigrant, a diasporic citizen? This need to inhabit a category took on a renewed urgency since I started teaching American students about India.

The controversy surrounding Leslee Udwin's recent BBC documentary, India's Daughter, increasingly being called the "Indian rape film," has reignited discussions about sexual violence, patriarchy and gender inequality in the world's largest democracy. The Indian government's misguided decision to ban the film is (as expected) having the opposite of the intended effect. It has left the newspaper, social media and blogosphere buzzing about the film.