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The recent controversy over India’s film censor board prompts a question: Do we need such an agency in this age of liberalisation of everything? The Central Board of Film Certification is meant to certify films for public viewing. But it does a lot more than that.
The statutory body is governed by the archaic provisions of the Cinematograph Act, 1952. What’s worse, the board retains a tradition established in 1920 when the first regional film censor boards were founded: moving images are censored before they reach the viewing public, observe Raminder Kaur and William Mazzarella in Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (2009). In 2013, the UPA government set up a panel to review the Act, under former Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal. Its recommendations are yet to be implemented.
Censorship is an anachronistic idea in an age of social media and online peer-to-peer sharing. A regular WhatsApp user would know that almost all ‘deleted’ scenes are freely available in cyberspace for anyone to view and share. Recently, documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan released his controversial film Ram Ke Naam on YouTube after its screening was halted in many places. Interestingly, the censor board cleared the film for public viewing over two decades ago.
YouTube and similar video storing and streaming platforms pose a challenge to censorship. Today, anyone can release anything anywhere for people to watch it on their gadgets even while on the go. This should make the information and broadcasting ministry introspect on such laws and come up with a democratic system of film certification.
It should stop censoring and develop the certification process instead. That is, have more categories of rating and allow theatres to decide what to show and what not to. By banning films altogether, the film industry — professionals, distributors, producers and theatre owners — loses out. That’s unfair. But what’s most important is to allow people to decide for themselves what to see.
Assistant Editor
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