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INDIA's CUTTING EDGE OF FILM CENSORSHIP: DENYING FREE EXPRESSION
By Shoma A. Chatterji [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Film censorship in India is statutory. The Cinematograph Act
1952 is primarily based on provisions, which form a part of the
Indian Constitution. Article 19 refers to the Right to Freedom,
which is a fundamental right. Article 19 (1) (a) gives the right
to freedom of speech and expression to all citizens subject to
reasonable restrictions. The broad scope of such reasonable
restrictions given in Article 19(2) are: sovereignty and
integrity of India, security of the State, friendly relations
with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in
relations to contempt of court, defamation or indictment to an
offence. These restrictions form the legal basis of censorship
of films in our country.
The picture in reality however, is far from simple. Every other
day, a new controversy raises its head, arising in terms of what
should or should not be shown, what should or should not be cut
out from this or that film.
The word censorship with reference to cinema conjures
up images of a gigantic pair of scissors merrily
clipping away through reels and reels of celluloid.
Today, it is Mahesh Bhatts Sadak, tomorrow, it is
Shashi Ranjans Siyasat, the day after, and it is Ketan
Mehtas O Darling! Yeh Hai India followed by Mira Nairs
Kamasutra and Mahesh Bhatts Zakhm. Of course, one must
not forget to mention Shekhar Kapoors Bandit Queen and
Mani Ratnams Bombay.
The Central Board of Film Certifications guidelines amended up
to May 1983, clearly laid down its three-fold objectives of
censorship: (a) the medium of cinema remains responsible and
sensitive to the values and standards of society, (b) artistic
expression and creative freedom are not unduly curbed, and (c)
censorship is responsive to social change. These objectives are
in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (2) of Section 5B
of the Cinematograph Act 1952, (37 of 1952) and directions given
by the Central Government for sanctioning films for public
exhibition.
Apart from the obvious loopholes, the above codes completely
missed out on one thing the obscenity contained in the lyrics of
film songs. Filmmakers desperate to compete with the opening sky
which did not brook censorship, tried to compensate with sound,
what they were not allowed to do through visuals. Sound here,
meaning song lyrics, which, they hoped, would be overlooked by
the members of the CBFC.
Then one fine day, a song opening with the line, choli ke
peechhey kya hai (What is behind the blouse?) hit the scene. It
was from a Subhash Ghai film, Khalnayak, danced in duet by
Madhuri Dixit and Neena Gupta and sung by Alka Yagnik and Ila
Arun. Anand Bakshi, who penned the song, denies till this day
that there is anything vulgar about it. It was a song
appropriate to the situation, he insists, going on to say that
the next line answers the question in the first line choli mein
dil hai mera (its the heart) that is not obscene at all. The
rest of the lyrics in the song however, belie Bakshis claim as
they have little to do with the heart. As Madhuri does her
number, the camera focusses on her heaving cleavage, swaying
hips and ample midriff, making the real purpose of the song
obvious.
The success of the choli song right across India and even abroad
(this writer saw Indian girls gyrate to this number for the
benefit of their guests in London), gave rise to songs, which
made the choli song sound like a nursery rhyme.
Yaarana had a song that went kaise nikaloo choli se and the
Censors were caught napping on this one as well! Lyricist
Sameer, notorious for penning the Raja Babu song sarkailon
khatiya jaada lagein picturized on Karisma Kapoor and Govinda as
if they are making love with their clothes on, pleads innocent.
This is a folk song from Uttar Pradesh and I heard it sung by
Sapna Awasthi, a U.P singer of folk songs. It is a song often
sung at weddings. It would hardly have received the kind of flak
it did because of the vulgar way in which it was picturized. He
adds that folk music is often the inspiration for songs accused
of bawdy lyrics in Hindi films but the error lies in the
visualization and the choreography, not in the lyrics per se.
Sameer adds that after the tremendous success of Khalnayak and
the choli ke peechhey song number, filmmakers and music
companies insisted on songs with double meanings and vulgar
connotations.
The story writer of Eena Meena Deeka actually supplied me the
opening line of the song towel mein bahar jaogi to halla much
jaayega if you go out in a towel, there will be a furore which I
had to develop into a full-fledged song. For a major part of the
song, the camera zeroed in on Juhi Chawlas bare legs and back as
she romped across the screen in a towel. The motive of the
filmmaker was obvious to titillate the audience and fill the
coffers at the box office.
Thankfully, the audience this time did not swallow and the film
flopped inspite of an overdose of vulgarity. So did Andaz, the
other film which had Juhi Chawla sing darwaza khulla chhod aayee
neend ke maare (I kept the door open because I was drowsy with
sleep) which is a pointer to the fact that the audience cannot
be won over every time just with bawdy lyrics and vulgar
picturisation. There were shocking numbers that followed. One
such being sexy sexy sexy mujhe log bole picturized on a
skimpily clad Karisma Kapoor doing a sexy number on stage for
Khuddar. Another was a guttar guttar number penned by Maya
Govind for the Mithun-starrer Dalal.
Trouble started in early 1994, boosted further by
excerpts of songs-and-dances on Doordarshan and on the
satellite channels. Choli ke Peechhey was forgotten
in the wake of worse bawdiness in Khuddar, Raja Babu
and Andaz. Alongside, there was the example of more
graphic scenes of combat in the do-or-die scenes.
Censor Board guidelines released through the
newspapers on July 31, 1994, clearly laid down what
would be henceforth, forbidden on screen.
These are enumerated below.
Censor Board Guidelines released in July 1994 (Formulated in
December 1991)
Double-meaning dialogues referring to a womans anatomy (e.g.
breasts as apples or some other fruit.)
Simulation of sexual movements (e.g. showing swinging of a car
with a couple inside.)
Man and woman in close proximity to each other or one over the
other and making below-the-waist jerks suggesting copulation.
Pelvic jerks, breast swinging, hip jerks, man and woman mounting
on each other, rubbing womans body from breasts to thighs,
hitting/rubbing man with breasts, sitting on each others thighs
and waist with entwined legs, lifting and peeping inside a
skirt, squeezing a womans navel and waist.
Vulgar kissing on breasts, navel, buttocks, upper part of thighs.
Coins, etc, being put inside the blouse and other types of eve teasing.
Disrobing women in public.
There is a disapproval of display of violence in and on places
of worship such as hospitals, orphanages particularly using
bombs and guns.
Taboo on the portrayal of violence on pregnant women,
handicapped persons, patients and children.
Even kidnapping of children does not find favour.
Slapping/beating/assaulting of women by kith and kin.
Violence in police stations using chains, gun butts and other
third degree methods. (Any kind of violence that could be
imitated by the public at large.)
Visuals of violence on and victimization of women by forcing
them into prostitution.
Stabbing by dagger, beheading, visuals of dead body hanging
(could be shown in a flash.)
Setting human beings on fire.
If the aforementioned codes were to be followed to the letter,
or in principle, or through visuals and words, then every second
film released today should fall under that gigantic pair of
Censors scissors.
Sathya, Vaastav, Tarkeib (which has the titillating song-dance
number by Shilpa Shetty that goes dupatte ka pallu kidhar ka
kidhar hai) should have all been banned. Vaastav and Sathya both
films fetched awards from private organizations and at the
national level. Dushman and Sangharsh, directed by Tanuja
Chandra, leash the screen with graphic violence including
violence committed on women. Blood and gore tear the screen
asunder and the CBFC couldnt care less.
It picks up a film like Zakhm for its communal overtones, though
it has the real-life, post-bomb-blast Mumbai communal riots as
the backdrop. Fiza with current heart-throb Hrithik Roshan has
the same backdrop the Mumbai communal riots. But the CBFC has
put on blinkers probably because they do not dare to question
the hysteric mesmerism of the Indian audience.
Hrithiks debut film, Kaho Na Pyar Hai is no less violent. But it
goes scot-free under scissors whose blades have selectively
(conveniently?) lost their razor edge. The Bobby
Deol-Kajol-Moneesha- starrer Gupt directed by Rajeev Rai had a
series of the most violent murders recently witnessed on the
Indian screen. But the censors were napping as usual. The same,
or more, goes for the other Bobby Deol-Rani Mukherjee starrer
Bichchoo. Plagiarized from a famous French film called Leon,
graphic violence is the very base the film is structured on.
Never mind its lukewarm reception by the masses, the fact
remains that it could hoodwink the Censors all right. The story
is centred on a mercenary killer. Need one say more?
The so-called off-mainstream films are no less, as far as the
picturization of graphic violence goes. Gulzars much-praised,
abundantly awarded and commercially successful film Maachis, is
an illustration in point. Gulzar never tires of repeating that
the film is a love-story, not on terrorism at all.
The film opens on a tortured corpse being pulled out of a well
in the compound of the local police station. It closes on the
murder of the hero and suicide of the heroine, which
rationalizes the love-tragedy story, but does not in any way,
undercut the violence bit. His next film Hu-Tu-Tu unspools the
story of two children pitted against their own corrupt parents!
They conspire to kill them at a public rally and then kill
themselves. Should films show children sitting on judgement and
actually execute their parents? In an ambience where corruption
is more the rule than the exception, wouldnt this kind of film
trigger killer instincts among some, high-principled children
when they find their parents indulging in corruption of any
kind? The grown-up daughter who kills her own mother has no
compunctions whatever about living with an underground terrorist
and getting pregnant by him! Priyadarshans Kaala Pani is
similarly violent. Kaala Pani offers a model lesson to students
of cinema on how effectively graphic violence can be filmed.
Vinay Shukla's Godmother, a film that bagged five National
Awards last year, has so much violence woven into the shooting
script that you come out of the theatre feeling physically tired
of the strain on your eyes and your ears. Shool, the film that
got Manoj Bajpai an award at the BFJA Awards this year, has
violence spilling across the entire film. Godmother dispels many
myths about motherhood, true, bringing down the Indian woman
from the pedestal society forcibly places her on.
But the manner in which he goes about telling the story, the
strategies he adopts to invest it with credibility, are
anti-social and dangerous for a generation already being bred on
ethnic warfare, match-fixing and corruption in politics. Anu, a
Bengali film that marked the debut of one more woman director,
Satarupa Sanyal, revolves around the gang rape and its aftermath
on the life and marriage of a young girl. Apart from being a
part of the Indian Panorama at the Hyderabad Filmotsav a couple
of years back, it won a few awards at its home state. How did
the CBFC allow this to pass through its rigorous scissors?
Kalpana Lajmis Darmiyaan and Amol Palekars Daayre are also
violent films. Some of the violence is subtle and strong and
therefore, more positive than dangerous. But the graphic
violence that these two films indulge in, cinematographically
and in terms of sound effects, is positively harmful and
violates the latest guidelines of Censorship. Buddhadeb
Dasguptas latest film Uttara, brought him the Best Director
award at the National Awards this year and the Special Award for
Best Director at the Venice Film festival recently.
The quality of the film does deserve the awards and the critical
acclaim it has been winning. But the intensity of violence the
film offers breaks almost every norm contained in the Censorship
guidelines delineated above. A Christian priest who looks after
lepers in the area, is torched in the village church he preaches
in. The Church burns down along with the priest. Uttara, the
girl who becomes the bone of contention between two friends, is
gang-raped by the goons who move around aiming to kill the
priest and burn the church down. The same goons gun down a
midget who offers Uttara marriage and a settled family life, in
cold blood. When the goons chase Mathew, the orphan, the masked
dancers of the village shelter him. The wrestling the two
friends engage in, as a form of leisurely pastime, turns into a
fight-unto-death when Uttara creates a schism between them. So
much violence! To what end? Why? What purpose does this serve?
And what were the Censors doing while they were watching this
film to give it the certificate? Or did the august name of
Buddhadeb Dasgupta scare them away from even suggesting cuts or
changes?
The emphasis of the CBFC, wrongly, is on literal representation,
both for sexual censorship as well as for censorship on violence
in cinema. Blocking a literal view of the figure, in violence or
in sex, does little to achieve the desired effect of eschewing
their effects on the audience psyche. The grounds of censorship
will have to be aesthetic rather than social or cultural.
The CBFC should frame its future guidelines by considering the
film as a total visual and narrative experience. To impose a
code of censorship that depends upon the literality of
representation of particular images is to miss the nature of
what a movie screen is and how it works in relation to the
regime of desire says sociologist Veena Das. She insists that
collective imagination constantly lives out the horrors of
contemporary forms of politics and violence. So, guidelines that
say that violence in police stations using chains, gun butts and
other third-degree methods will be censored lest they offer
models for imitation has little meaning. Not showing beating
with chains is fine. But the chilling scream of a figure in a
darkened cell with a shadow suggesting the torturer can activate
the imagination much more strongly of an audience already fed on
real-life stories of police torture.
The last word on this may perhaps belong to Shyam Benegals
comment on the CBFC brouhaha over Mani Ratnam's Bombay. Freedom
of expression has in-built constraints. It implies honesty and
conviction honesty about humankind and conviction about the
moral right of the films statement. Freedom of expression is an
empowering process, without which our society cannot grow. And
what is galling is that freedom of expression is granted to the
leaders of our country but not to the rest of the people.
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