ON CENSORSHIP AND GHAR WAPSI
The session at the Hyderabad Literary Festival on Day 3, by Leela Samson and Mahesh Bhatt, saw discussions on the nature of censorship in India among others
In any setting, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt would be a colourful personality, but at the Hyderabad Literary Festival, Leela Samson’s recent resignation from the Censor Board attracted a lot of attention towards herself.
When asked whether it would have been better for her to have tried to change the system from within than outside, she said, “For a year, we were left as a hanging committee. We were asked to stay till a new committee was constituted. Even six months ago, I had tendered a notification asking them to accelerate the process of forming the new board. That’s why I decided to quit.”
In the session on “cultural plurality”, Samson pointed out the need to change the concept of “censorship” to “certification”. “I don’t like the word censorship. It’s high time we started calling it certification and the certification board. But the Indian public love the word ‘ censor’ and so do the filmmakers,” she says.
And expectedly, when Mahesh Bhatt again used the word “censor”, the two shared glances and a comforting pat as the filmmaker blurted, “We will have discussions about this later.”
To another question, Samson pointed out, “The laws we have in place right now are from 1952. We have a revision waiting from Justice Mugdal that we just have to put in place.”
FROM THEIR OWN HEARTS AND ROOTS
Mahesh
Bhatt, no stranger to controversy
for decades now in the art of filmmaking, asserted that we “need to keep the stories alive because that is where people live. The history of a nation is the story of its people and I have the heartbeat of the plurality that you talk about”. The filmmaker, who is half Hindu and half Muslim, also questioned the concept of “ghar wapsi”. “Where do we go? Do we return to the Vedic times, when there apparently was no cultural contamination?”
Meanwhile, Samson, who grew up in an Army background, with a Jewish father and Catholic mother, spent most of her childhood in an environment that had influences from all religions and philosophies. But the differences were soon to seep in. Samson, a known Bharatanatyam dancer, recalls: “When I wanted to learn multiple dance forms, my guru discouraged me. The idea was compared to having a husband and still wanting other men”.
ON CHARLIE HEBDO
Since
the discussions centred on trying to understand the thin line between freedom of expression and being politically correct, the attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo was bound to surface. Was it an attack on freedom of expression? Or was it just a terror strike? Mahesh Bhatt said, “Can you poke fun at the Holocaust and get away with it in Europe? Even in the most liberal countries, there are certain lines that cannot be crossed, and there is a need to accommodate that in our
expressions too.”
We were asked to stay till a new committee was constituted. I had tendered a notification asking them to accelerate the process... That’s why I quit.”
—
LEELA SAMSON