Pahlaj ‘Scissorhands’ Nihalani is chopping away to merriment in keeping with the nation’s growing nationalistic mood. Not only that, he is banning films on flimsy grounds of crossing the sanskari Lakshman Rekha, taking the country back to mythological times
Last June, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) nearly scuttled the release of Udta Punjab. The board’s boss Pahlaj Nihalani, one-time purveyor of Bollywood potboilers, ordered as many as 89 cuts to the film. The issues that the film addressed were too contentious for mass consumption, he ruled. The makers of Udta Punjab dragged CBFC to court – and won. The Mumbai high court overturned the censor board directive. The film hit the screens with only a single excision
Did the verdict upholding artistic freedom tame the “learned” Nihalani? Not one whit. This self-appointed guardian of “Indian culture” – whose loyalty to those who gave him the job borders on the slavish – has now turned his ire towards two other films – Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha (Hindi title: Lipstick Wale Sapne) and Jayan Cherian’s Ka Bodyscapes – for endangering the glory of our great country
Lipstick Under My Burkha has bagged several international awards, but has failed to cut any ice with CBFC. It has been denied a censor certificate because “the story is lady-oriented, their fantasy above life”. Go figure! It is perfectly all right for women to be projected as objects of desire on the big screen, but any exploration of their own desires is a strict no-no for the moral police masquerading as the censor board.
Lipstick Under My Burkha stars Konkona Sen Sharma and Ratna Pathak-Shah, among others. It follows four women – a hijab-wearing college girl, a young beautician, a mother of three, and a middle-aged widow – who throw caution to the wind as they seek to discover/ rediscover their sexuality amid widespread social conservatism. CBFC is seeking to put the film down on the grounds that it has “sexual scenes, abusive language, audio pornography and a bit sensitive touch (sic) about one particular section of society”. This kind of paternalistic policing of films makes little sense in light of the fact that moviegoers in this country are subjected to much worse day and in out – and not just inside a cinema hall.
The producer of Lipstick Under My Burkha, Prakash Jha, himself a veteran director with a history of run-ins with CBFC, has said: “This sort of problem will persist as long as some people are given the power to censor or edit a filmmaker’s work. We have to get past censoring and talk about certification.”
That is precisely what was recommended in April last year by the Shyam Benegal Committee that the government set up to suggest ways to bring the Cinematograph Act, 1952 in line with the changing times. The report was submitted nearly a year ago, but the government has yet to make any concrete move to implement the suggestion, leaving Nihalani free to ride roughshod
About CBFC’s ruling on Lipstick Under My Burkha, Benegal has said: “I am totally against any kind of censorship.” This is in keeping with the thrust of the report that the Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner and his committee submitted to the then information and broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley. It reads: “CBFC should only be a film certification body whose scope should be restricted to categorizing the suitability of the film to audience groups on the basis of age and maturity…” Venkaiah Naidu has since taken charge of the ministry and the report seems to have been forgotten.
Ka Bodyscapes, a controversial Malayalam film made by a New York-based director who is known to push the boundaries of politics and sexualities, hasn’t benefitted from the liberal censorship approach advocated by Benegal simply because it still isn’t in place. Jayan Cherian’s film has been denied a certificate because, in the words of CBFC, it “glorifies homosexuality”.
The film has been also been accused of “vulgarity, depicting Hinduism in a derogatory fashion and showing a female Muslim character masturbating”. In a letter to the filmmaker, CBFC lists its objections to Ka Bodyscapes: the film has references to Hindu organizations indirectly, “which is unwarranted”; it has nudity accentuating vital parts of the male body (in paintings); and Lord Hanuman is shown in poor light as gay.
With Nihalani having cast himself in the role of a cultural and moral arbiter, Cherian has sought legal redress. He says: “Nowhere in the film is Hanuman depicted as gay. Just because an apparently homosexual man worships Hanuman, it doesn’t mean he is gay.”
Eventually, it isn’t so much about what is acceptable and what isn’t as about the right of a filmmaker to expect the censor board to have members who have enough exposure to cinema to be able to see a film in its overall artistic context and judge its elements accordingly. Says Cherian: “The real virtues of democracy are lost when there is no space for a voice to say something that the system doesn’t approve of.”
Calling CBFC regressive and reactionary would be an understatement. There is politics at play here and any film that runs counter to the collective wisdom of the establishment is destined to face trouble. Since Nihalani took over the reins of CBFC in early 2015, films such as Kamal Swaroop’s documentary Battle for Benaras, Raj Amit Kumar’s Unfreedom and Chandra Prakash Dwivedi’s Mohalla Assi are on the banned list for these are films the current dispensation does not want us to see.
Battle for Benaras was filmed in the course of 40-odd days leading up to and during the 2014 Lok Sabha election in Varanasi, where Aam Aadmi Party supremo took on Narendra Modi. The CBFC has described the film as “mischievous” and prevented its distribution on the specious argument that it could trigger law and order problems.
Swaroop, one of Mumbai’s most respected filmmakers, has pointed out that the film only uses recorded speeches of the principal candidates and does not articulate any views of its own. Battle for Benaras is an observational documentary aimed primarily at capturing the vibrancy of the Indian electoral process, without papering over its distortions. But for CBFC under Nihalani, an undisguised Modi loyalist, the film is a ticking bomb
Pretty much the same is the case with Mohalla Assi and Unfreedom. While the former, based loosely on Kashi Ka Assi, a popular Kashinath Singh novel that satirises the commercialisation of Varanasi, has been banned on account of using abusive language, Unfreedom has had its freedom snatched away because it deals with two hot-button themes – lesbianism and religious fundamentalism.
The fraught relationship between CBFC and Indian filmmakers certainly isn’t of Nihalani’s making. It predates his arrival. But there has never been a CBFC chief less equipped for the role – and more fired by his unquestioning fealty to the established order – than him. This is, therefore, the time to completely overhaul the film censorship system, which continues to reek of a colonial hangover and suffer from increasing incompetence.