Bollywood Uncensored

Censorship is a bad word. It raises visions of dirty old men, armed with scissors, waiting to snip at any film that comes their way with no apparent provocation. That the practice militates against the spirit of liberty and the right to freedom of expression is an issue that concerns every right-thinking individual in a progressive democracy. The opposing view to this is that no freedom can ever be absolute and must necessarily be accompanied by appropriate checks and controls. In the absence of a self-regulatory mechanism within the Indian film industry, a third view is also gaining currency: the Central Board of Film Certification or CBFC can at best play an advisory role and rather than censor, must rate films according to their suitability. This book dwells into various aspects of the social discourse and raises some disturbing questions on issues like the government playing moral police, inconsistency in interpreting the censorship guidelines, liberties filmmakers take in glorifying sex and violence, role of the public at large, the feminist perspective on denigrating women on screen, politicization of the censorship process. It also offers some options by way of comparisons with the censorship norms prevailing in other leading filmmaking countries across the globe. Effectively, the book gets to the bottom of the censorship process and illustrates how it impacts both cinema and society in many different ways. With rare photographs from several controversial Bollywood films and details of scenes deleted by censors (which nobody would ever get to see), this is a timely eye-opener for anybody remotely curious, even amused (if not bewildered) by the unabashed celebrations of pornography in present-day Hindi cinema.