Censoring Peace

Censoring Peace

It is a strange world where nuclear weapons are believed to help prevent war and a film on peace is seen as a potential instigator of violence.

CENSORING PEACE

Ammu  Joseph

Promote pornography, censor peace.  This appears to be the new credo of the Central Board of Film Certification, judging by two recent revelations of the Censor Board’s thoughts and actions. 

According to a front page report in the New Indian Express on 17 June, the CBFC is toying with the idea of allowing theatres to screen pornographic movies without cuts.  The proposal was apparently received from an official panel in Kerala.  The chairperson of the Board, Vijay Anand, has been quoted as saying, "The committee thought it wasn’t possible to stamp out the sex film trade.  The better option is to regulate it, like they do in other countries:  set up special halls, levy 2-3 times the regular entertainment duty."  The report suggests that if the proposed amendments to the Cinematograph Act, 1952, are approved by Parliament, the CBFC will institute a restricted category of X- or R-rated films to be shown in special halls and possibly other appropriate places.  The government will, no doubt, profit from the promotion of pornography, as it does from the promotion of liquor. 

The Board is apparently in the process of trying to review and revamp the Cinematograph Act, 1952, which dates back half a century and could certainly do with transformation.  This proposal may be just a minor element in its presumably more broad-based attempt to update and liberalise the law -- although, predictably, it is this aspect of the Board’s reform process that the media have elected to highlight. The merits and demerits of this particular plan will no doubt be hotly debated, not only by those with genuine concerns about the impact of pornography on gender relations, but by the self-appointed culture police who have in recent years taken to imposing censorship by mob on anything that does not fit into their narrow view of morality and "Indian-ness."   

A more urgent concern at this point is the possibility that the proposed liberalisation of the censorship regime may not extend to the political content of cinema.  The recent experience of well-known documentary film-maker Anand Patwardhan indicates that the CBFC may not be able or willing to free itself from the shackles of political correctness as defined by the government of the day. 

According to a press release issued last week by Patwardhan, the Censor Board has called for as many as six cuts in his award-winning documentary film, War and Peace.  Of the major cuts demanded by the Board, the most  astounding is this:  the deletion of all visuals and dialogues of political leaders featured in the film, including the prime minister and other ministers.  Since no specific visuals or dialogues have been identified as objectionable, it is clear that no politician is to be seen or heard.  Obviously, as Patwardhan puts it, "The Censor Board deems it illegal to report the speeches of ministers, prime ministers and political leaders." 

Two other cuts asked for by the Board are also quite astonishing.  One calls for the deletion of the entire sequence featuring a neo-Buddhist Dalit leader’s condemnation of  the 1998 nuclear tests,  including his critical comments on the choice of the Buddha’s birthday for the explosions and the use of the Buddha’s name in the military code proclaiming the success of the tests in view of the fact that the Buddha was always unarmed and has long been identified with peace.   The second demands the expunction of a Dalit song which describes the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a Brahmin.