Censor Board, don't cut the film

It is difficult to say how many cuts are needed to kill a film. But the 89 cuts that the Central Board of Film Certification, under its chairman Pahlaj Nihalani, has proposed for the film Udta Punjab will badly mutilate the film. The Board has also proposed taking the film out of its context by removing all references in it to Punjab and its cities, where the story takes place, and even changing the title. It wants the story to happen in a fictional place without a name. That amounts to changing the film altogether, and making a new one, and that is outside the remit of the CBFC. The Censor Board under Nihalani had till now been preoccupied with kisses and expletives and profanities in films. It has cut out many of them in line with its cultural prejudices and assumptions.

But now politics also seems to have entered the mind of the Censor Board. The theme of the film is the drug problem in Punjab. It is going to figure as a major election issue in the state which is going to the polls next year. The ruling Akali Dal-BJP government will have to answer questions about its failure to deal with the problem and even face charges that some ruling party politicians are involved in the drug business.

Many in the ruling dispensation feel that the depiction and discussion of the drug issue in the film would hurt their electoral chances. So the bogey of defaming Punjab and showing it in a poor light and hurting its sentiments has been invoked to neutralise the film, which is in effect to ban it in its present form. The Censor Board should not consider the political and electoral impact of a film in its judgment about it. But Nihalani has politicised film censorship with the decision in Udta Punjab. His political orientation is well-known, and he has allowed it to influence his decision. It is misuse of power.

Films hold a mirror to society. They help the society to look at itself, examine its practices and even correct them. Salaam Bombay depicted shameful levels of poverty and exploitation in that city but there was no demand to change its name or anything in the film. The film would have lost its power without reference to Bombay. The same is the case with Udta Punjab. It is for the people of Punjab to see the film and judge it. The Censor Board cannot curb the creativity and freedom of expression of the filmmaker and act as a party’s or a government’s agent.