I sat literally open-mouthed last night during some parts of India's Daughter, an astounding documentary about the brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh in 2012.

Not just because of the disturbing, victim-blaming content – one of the convicted rapists casually telling the interviewer "A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy"and that a "decent girl won't roam around at nine o'clock at night"; a supposedly educated lawyer explaining that he would douse his own daughter in petrol and set her alight if she "disgraced herself" – but because of the knowledge that thanks to the Indian authorities, this powerful film cannot even be seen by the public in that country.

A Delhi court has banned any screening of the documentary, and senior minister Venkaiah Naidu has said the country will look into how to stop it being shown abroad too.

"This is an international conspiracy to defame India," he said, adding that the country would be "harmed" if the film was seen elsewhere.

Meanwhile home minister Rajnath Singh has said there will be an inquiry into how prison authorities gave British director Leslee Udwin permission to interview rapist Mukesh Singh on death row – as if that was the most important question to be asked here.

If there's one thing more shameful than a country with a terrible record on sexual violence, where views on the value of women that can only be described as revolting are still widespread, it's a country seeking to shut down discussion of that truth in the most embarrassingly ham-fisted of ways. That is where the worst harm to India lies.

Udwin says the Indian authorities should have embraced her film as an opportunity to show the world how much the country has changed since Singh's death 

This wasn't a sensationalist film. It was a careful, almost understated creation, weaving together the painfully sad testimony of Jyoti's parents – remembering how she had asked them to use any money they'd saved for her future wedding to pay for the education she craved – with the voices of academics, campaigners and those involved on the night.

Slowly but surely, it built a picture not just of the devastating culture of acceptance around rape in a society that values men above women from birth, but also of the huge and immediate outpouring of grief and fury in the aftermath of Jyoti's death, as men and women alike took to the streets in their thousands to protest about attitudes to rape.

It's not only rape that wrecks lives in a country like India; it's the threat of it too. Justice Leila Seth, who contributed to a landmark report on gender violence in India in 2013, spoke in the film about education being the only way things would change, because it would give girls self-worth, and also teach young men the value of women.

But when I travelled to Delhi a few months after Jyoti's death I met teenagers whose parents had forbidden them to go to school because they feared the constant harassment they suffered on the journey there – known as "eve-teasing" – would lead to sexual assault that would destroy the family's "honour". Meena, 16, was instead being prepared for marriage, resigned to the fact that her dream of becoming a police officer or teacher was dead.

Udwin says the Indian authorities should have embraced her film as an opportunity to show the world how much has changed in the country since Singh's death. That they have failed to do so shows how far there is still left to travel.

If you haven't seen India's Daughter yet, I urge you to watch it now.
India's Daughter will be shown again on BBC4 at 10pm on Sunday March 7, and is available on BBC iPlayer.

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Fiona Cowood
I'm Cosmo's Content Director, most interested in the serious stuff - politics, news and campaigns. Having said that, what's the deal with James Franco these days?