What has escaped attention during the boiling outrage over Udta Punjab is the bizarre state of film censorship in India.
To take recent examples, Quentin Tarantino's mystery thriller The Hateful Eight (2015) which featured Samuel L Jackson and Kurt Russell, was randomly hacked by Pahlaj Nihalani-led CBFC ostensibly because of its "gory scenes and violence against women."
Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt at a publicity appearance for the film 'Udta Punjab'. Image by Sachin Gokhale/Firstpost
Curiously, while some cuss words like "bitch" and "whore" were beeped out, the character Daisy (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) getting punched in the face a dozen times was allowed to pass. Perhaps those weren't violent enough. 'Penis' made it through but allusions like 'pecker' and 'johnson' didn't. Details of the censor certificate are here.
If that isn't bizarre enough, consider that in the same day thatThe Hateful Eight was released, Oscar contender The Danish Girl came out with zero cuts or blurs even though it depicted a minute-long scene with full frontal nudity.
Tom Hooper's 2015 British-American romantic drama got Alicia Vikander an Oscar for 'best performance by an actress in a supporting role' and it featured copious scenes of nudity, transsexuality and kissing which were allowed to pass with just an 'A' certificate. Why? Apparently because Nihalani thought the filmmakers "didn't go overboard with nudity."
Remember, he is the same man who clipped James Bond's kiss by "20 seconds" in Spectre because, to quote him, it was akin to "doing sex in your house with door open. And show to people the way you are doing sex."
But it will be unfair to pick on Nihalani even though the CBFC chairman has shown a repeated penchant for making himself a butt of ridicule.
The issue, as multiple national award-winning filmmaker Shyam Benegal had pointed out in an interview to Firstpost: "the tragedy of censorship in our country is that often, personal biases and prejudices come in the way of evaluating films for the Indian audience… The gulf between the urban and non-urban, the metropolitan and non-metropolitan audience…the guidelines of the censor board are too rigid to be applied to this diverse audience."
Benegal, who heads the government-appointed revamp panel of CBFC, watched Abhishek Chaubey-directed Udta Punjab on Wednesday and found it to be a “laudable effort”.
“It’s a well-made film. It brings to attention a very serious problem, that of drug use among young people, which can, if we are not careful, become a rampant problem. It’s a laudable effort... But people are misreading the film,” he said. “They are under the impression that it is anti-Punjab. I don’t think the film is anti-Punjab at all,” he was quoted, as saying by news agency IANS.
This raises a bigger debate over the need, at all, for having censorship in films and Union Information and Broadcasting minister seemed to be hinting at a more liberalised norm and radical changes soon.
Speaking at the CNN News18 Indian of the Year Award show on Thursday, Arun Jaitley said: "You will probably have a system where you will have to have a certificate. The correct word is certification and not censorship. Certification norms will have to be liberal.
The Benegal committee, he said, has suggested some changes. "There is a well documented report by Shyam Benegal, the first part of which has come to me which is under consideration. Over the next few days, we are going to announce some very radical changes in that," he said.
The idea of censorship in film, books or works or art stems from an inherent hypocrisy in a democracy based on a Constitution that promises liberty of thought and expression.
The problem, of course, started with India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, whose government in its first 14 years amended the Constitution 17 times. The First Amendment — carried out within 18 months — added restrictions on freedom of expression, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a), to suppress extremist publications for public order.
A Time magazine report of 28 May 1951, reproduced by R Vaidyanathan in Firstpost here, said “Part of the Indian press, said (Nehru), is dirty, indulges in ‘vulgarity, indecency and falsehood.’ To teach it manners, Nehru proposed an amendment to India’s constitution that would impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech and expression."
Once that Rubicon was crossed, there was no stopping anyone from misusing the law or to use censorship as a political tool as it has been in Udta Punjab's case.
If it is spurious, the government can and should ban a packet of mustard oil, else consuming it may make us sick. But a movie isn't a packet of oil or a bar of soap. It is an idea. And it is decidedly stupid to ban ideas because they cannot be banned in the first place.
It is preposterous to think — as the CBFC has done repeatedly in the past — that by muting or beeping out expletives anyone can be prevented from being exposed to it. Apart from the fact that there is no empirical data to show a correlation between a violent movie and a murder or a sexually explicit movie and a rape, the fact is that Internet has made it absolutely impossible for any idea to be censored.
But there is a larger debate still. Why should we let anyone, including the government, decide what is good or bad for us? This is a personal choice, a guaranteed right (albeit qualified). Why should we let any agency usurp that right?
Apart from the fact that artistic freedom and creative expression are as precious as audience's right to make informed choices, censorship in a democracy impacts the very basis of a free society — the principle that each and every individual has the right to decide what art or entertainment he or she wants — or does not want — to receive or create.
When a government censors a movie or bans a book or work of art, it sends out a message that if the contents were to be exposed to public, that would either be morally corrupting or result in some grave physical damage. This is an exceedingly problematic position.
There is zero evidence to show that a movie or a work of art induces someone to carry out a murder, rape or other crimes. On morality, if we suppress material based on the actions of unstable people, no films, work of fiction, or art would be safe from censorship. Psychopaths, for instance, justify their acts of violence while citing the Bible.
Studies on the relationship between violence in media (used in its wider sense) and in real life have proved inconclusive. In fact, there is no statistical correlation between the two phenomena. Many human behaviouralists believe, for instance, that violence and sexually explicit art and entertainment have a useful and constructive societal role, serving as a vicarious outlet for individual aggression.
Also, where does one draw the line the sand? What one may find offensive may not be so to me. What gives one the right, then, to prevent me from consuming it? However, while I may not be stopped, one may very well choose not to consume it. So an absence of censorship actually makes for a freer society where we are guided by choice, not compulsion.
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