Censoring CBFC misdeeds

 

The CBFC is already weakened by a complete inability to resist censorship both from the state as well as non-state actors. But when the malaise of corruption hits a powerful body that vets scores of films to enforce guidelines for film certification, then questions about the effectiveness of its regulation are inevitable.

 

Film producers are reported to have paid money for quick clearance of their films as well as for obtaining certification for film promos and trailers that are screened on television. Now, the raids and arrest of such a senior official, second in command to Chairperson Leela Samson, raises a number of messy questions. Primarily, they raise apprehensions of the processes that result in the censorship of free speech and expression every time a film faces trouble with the board.

 

So when films get certified, is it because they satisfy all the board’s guidelines? Or are there any other considerations at play? When films get rejected, are we to assume they were rejected because they didn’t fulfill the norms laid down? Does the ‘Censor’ Board, as it is popularly known, then censor films for other considerations?

 

All this calls for an urgent review of the entire process of censoring of, and clearing of films for certification after some cuts are imposed or some scenes deleted or a certificate for adult viewing or for the more lucrative universal/adult category.

 

 

Apart from monetary considerations that appear to be rampant in the certificates awarded, the CBFC needs to debate its guidelines more rigorously, and review how itsregional boards apply these norms and award certificates.

 

The boards are expected to certify films on the basis of these guidelines and the entire certification process has demonstrated how weak and arbitrary it actually is.  Inherent in the process is the most dangerous kind of political censorship and  two instances in the recent past are good examples.

 

In the first instance of documentary films, the problem of truth-telling becomes acute. The Kolkata regional office of the CBFC rejected outright ‘En dino Muzaffarnagar’ , the documentary film made by Shubhradeep Chakravorty and Meera Chaudhary on the grounds that the film was critical of one political party, in this case, the BJP, for engineering riots between the Jats and Muslims just before the Parliamentary elections in May this year.

 

Chakravorty, who tragically died of a brain hemorrhage on August 25, a week after his appeal against the rejection came up before the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), was a journalist turned film-maker who had made several films including the well-known ‘Godhra Tak: The terror trail’, in 2003.

 

FCAT chairperson Lalit Bhasin and other members at the FCAT hearing (the verdict for which is awaited), expressed apprehensions that the film was political and anti-caste, as some of the people interviewed in the film mentioned the BJP by name and identified the aggressors as ‘Jats’ !

 

But, as co-director Meera Chaudhary said, the film depicted reality as accurately as possible and if members of the community were responsible for violence, this could not be hidden. She was herself a member of the same community and decided to explore the reasons behind the violence.

 

Chakravorty, she said, had never applied for film certification before, preferring to screen his films in smaller shows but this time, he wanted to secure a certificate that would allow wider public exhibition. He also believed that the CBFC in his home state, Kolkata, would be receptive to a film that depicted not just the riots and the mayhem it created but also show how several villages in the same belt did not succumb to propaganda and remained violence-free.

 

He was hopeful of securing the certificate since the film stayed true to facts and was disappointed at its outright rejection. While he didn't account for the vagaries of film certification and the political pressure that he felt played a part in the decision, he wasn't willing to go down without a fight.

 

In the second instance, a certificate was awarded for ‘Kaum de Heere’, a Punjabi film about the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and reportedly focuses on the lives of the security guards who killed her: Kehar Singh, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh.

 

On the eve of its release, a complaint from the Punjab BJP chief Laxmi Kant Chawla to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh (the Punjab Youth Congress had taken up the issue earlier) that the release of the film may lead to communal tension between Hindus and Sikhs led to a review by the Information and Broadcasting ministry. An Intelligence Bureau report was requisitioned, which duly woke up to the possibility of tension. The certificate awarded to the film was withdrawn.

 

The film’s producers have said the film had stuck to the facts and moreover, was released abroad and viewed by a mixed Hindu-Sikh diaspora without any breakout of violence. Why, then, were there apprehensions of violence here, they asked?

 

It has become futile to continue to argue that the maintenance of law and order is the responsibility of the State. Doubtless the content of the film may be contentious to some and the Sikh religion’s highest body, the Akal Takht, may have designated the security guards as martyrs, but that is all the more reason these issues are examined and discussed openly.

 

Burying or silencing differences in perspectives of historical events or even insisting on only one version of history, as right-wing forces have tried to do innumerable times in the recent past, is immature and counter-productive. 

 

We do need to debate this, along with corruption, the other big 'C' clouding the issue of censorship in cinema today.