India plans to relax Bollywood censorship
NEW DELHI: India’s allpowerful censor board is planning a lighter approach to Bollywood after decades chopping tens of thousands of film scenes, from onscreen kisses to violent endings.
Set up by British rulers in the 1920s to block US movies with anti- colonial sentiment, the board went on to cut Indian films as much for their supposedly racy content as for their political overtones.
With modernisation, the government must now walk the tightrope of catering to a more liberal, youthful India without angering still deeply conservative strands of society.
“The rules are old. We have to write them with a modern and honest outlook.
" The Indian value system has changed hence censor rules must change,” admitted R. Singh, joint secretary of the film department in New Delhi.
The government attempted to show its more open-minded approach at the recent “CutUncut” festival in the capital, which screened originally censored film clips for the first time as part of Indian cinema’s centenary celebrations.
Directors such as Ramesh Sippy, who made the Hindi action blockbuster “Sholay” ( Embers) in 1975, also had the chance to vent their anger at censorship culture.
Sippy said he was forced to change his film’s plotline at the insistence of the censors, who decided it was too violent.
“The board said: ‘We will tell you how to end the movie’, and I was forced to shoot the ending again.
" I realised that if I keep fighting, my film’s release will not be allowed.”
K. Hariharan, a criticallyacclaimed filmmaker from south India, said he felt like “an anxious student waiting for his performance card” whenever censors watched his film.
He thinks it is time to disband the board, which he sees as a colonial remnant that restricts freedom of expression – an idea that the government may slowly be agreeing with.
“This whole business of brutally chopping scenes or forcing the filmmakers to alter the climax will have to end,” said Singh, who oversees the task of issuing certificates to all Indian movies.
A more relaxed approach is already allowing filmmakers to experiment.
Aamir Khan tested the limits in 2011 with comedy “Delhi Belly”, a film that outraged conservative critics for its toilet humour and dialogue strewn with profanities, which surprisingly passed the censors uncut.
Despite protests at cinemas and even a court case on charges of obscenity and insulting religion, the movie ran to full houses and became a cult hit for its reflection of young people in modern, urban India. — AFP