India is the world’s most prolific filmmaking country, but movies coming out of the subcontinent is often fraught with tales of censorship, bans and public outrage. 2017 has been particularly bad. Isn’t all art supposed to make us think? Or is freedom of expression becoming mere tinsel atop the tree?
The CBFC’s Examining Committee asked the film’s producers — the director was not present during the censor screening — to remove the shots where her stomach was visible. However, such editing would have disturbed the smooth choreographic flow of the elegant dance number (Ghoomar). The director preferred to conceal Deepika’s belly through computer graphics.”
A source present at the screening of Padmavat.
Earlier, the routine cabaret in Bombay movies was enacted by a ‘side-actress’, often a vamp, who had to finally die an unnatural death protecting the hero or some sundry good man from a perverse and blood-thirsty villain. It was surely effervescent Helen, a magical dancer, who lifted the original item song in Hindi cinema to scintillating heights without subverting basic moral or family values and never pushing titillation to the limits of perversity or vulgarity.
In contemporary Bollywood, if the above objection is granted, and it would surely border on the theatre of the absurd, let us not even then dare to rewind the raunchy item songs made (in)famous by ‘skin-deep’ top actresses, who have hitherto taken over from the ‘side-actresses’, in full public spectacle of skin and flesh, with ‘enlightened’ lyrics filled with obscene innuendo to match the rising adrenaline of sex-starved, frustrated male audiences in India. ‘Fevicol’ or ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ would give a run for its money in terms of its raunchy content to item songs like ‘Rambha ho’ or Padma Khanna’s famous jig in Jewel Thief, ‘Husn ke Saat Rang’, from the past.
The above revelation of the conscientious and high moral ground examining committee, reported in a portal, further moves to greater heights of absurdity by the following disclosure: “The screening and the discussion post the screening went on from 5 pm till almost 2 am. CBFC chairperson Prasoon Joshi was present. The historians and royal representatives raised many objections. But the board members of the CBFC found nothing objectionable in the content. They recommended a ‘UA’ with minor modifications.”
The dark irony is that despite the Supreme Court allowing the film to be released after its okay from the Censor Board with cuts and changes, including the name of the film, based on a mythical Sufi story of the 16th century, the Rajput Karni Sena refused to change its tactics. The latest is that hundreds of women in Rajasthan and elsewhere are signing in to do ‘jauhar’ (suicide by burning oneself to death – sati) if the film is released in the theatre halls. Even while most BJP state governments are solidly standing with the bullies who want to block the multi-crore, big box office, potential blockbuster, and while the BJP government in the Centre plays tactical footsie, the darkest irony is that no one has even seen the film.
Three TV journalists, all BJP loyalists, had earlier given a go- ahead to the film after a private screening. And, despite Sanjay Leela Bhansali compromising to the extreme, including in huge newspaper ads glorifying Rajput valour, the mobs are out there baying for his blood. Surely, India, at this moment of contemporary history, almost looks like Taliban Afghanistan, where both music and dance was banned, even while women accused of adultery, etc, were stoned to death in a football stadium in front of huge, cheering audiences.
Earlier, it was the Censor Board chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, who put a spanner in the wheels of all kinds of mainstream films, including by celebrated directors, plus big producers. Now, Nihalani himself has made several raunchy films with dance sequences which would make even the most lecherous blush in horror. However, once he took the high pulpit, he became the god of morality, making liberal voices cringe, and the lucrative film industry shrink. Now, despite Nihalani being sacked, the Frankenstein monsters unleashed by the parochial, xenophobic and patriarchal forces in the country, tacitly backed by ruling regimes of the BJP in several states and the Centre, has turned into an epidemic of sorts. And, like the river water disputes between the states, there seems no resolution in sight, despite the apex court and the censor board allowing the director’s freedom of expression – with cuts.
The phenomena are not new in India, where both Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen’s books are banned. Presumably, even the DH Lawrence classic, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ too is banned until this day. And, even if one forgets the pulping of academic Wendy Doniger's book on the Hindus, or the hounding of Perumal Murugan for his incisive writings, among others like AK Ramanujan’s epical ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’, the Indian power establishment, across all party spectrum, including the Left in Bengal, have routinely encouraged the sectarian forces which have refused to see reason.
Earlier, Deepa Mehta’s ‘Water’ and ‘Fire’ were violently attacked in the sets (like Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavat in Rajasthan) by Hindutva forces, so much so, the films were stalled, and the government refused to act in support of the acclaimed filmmaker. One wonders, what will happen if tomorrow Rabindranath Tagore or Munshi Premchand’s books (or cinematic adaptations), or even Satyajit Ray, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Shyam Benegal’s films are irrationally attacked because some sections don’t agree with ‘certain sectarian sentiments’!
‘Lipstick under the Burqa’ by Alankrita Srivastava, was hounded by Nihalini’s censor board. She was humiliated and demoralized. Finally, after its release, the audience discovered, how great this movie was, and how it opened up questions which Indian society was refusing to address. Similarly, ‘S Durga’, (earlier called Sexy Durga), in Malayalam, by young, avant-garde filmmaker Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, despite widely acclaimed by critics and audiences in Kerala and all over international film festivals, was repeatedly hounded, despite the Kerala High Court okaying it. So much so, it was not screened at the Goa International Film Festival hosted by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
The film depicts the nocturnal underbelly of a predatory, brutish and macho society. A stranded couple on the streets, suddenly discovers, that the whole world is an enemy, and the young woman ‘Durga’, otherwise named after a goddess who is worshipped in temples and homes, is suddenly turned into an object of lust and violence. It narrates the dark underbelly of the night streets of our towns and cities, where women, even with a companion, can’t venture out, by design or by mistake. She is at once dubbed as an object who should be brutalized.
Even while a few good films from Mumbai did hit the screen, like Konkana Sen’s ‘Death in the Gunj’ among others in 2017, a shadow of depressing doubt hangs over the Mumbai film industry, even as its big guns have refused to come out in solidarity with Bhansali. They are indeed refusing to understand that a mob running amok follows no rules, doctrines or principles of social or legal protocol – they are just out there baying for blood, without evidence, without truth on their side, completely irrational, and riding piggyback on the powers that be, with a tacit alliance hatched with the political class and the ruling regime. So, today it is this midriff or belly, tomorrow it might become some other part of the mind or body. Today, it is Deepika Padukone, tomorrow it can be Kareena Kapoor.
The hoarding is on the wall. It speaks its own perverse story.