The scary C-word

The noise around the ban on the movie, “Lipstick Under my Burkha” has died down. The ban was revoked earlier this month and the cast, crew and the public at large cannot stop promoting the movie with various innovative campaigns. This is not the first time that a movie was banned in India. Lipstick under my Burkha (LMB) is just a tiny entry in the lost list of movies that were not fortunate to see the daylight. We have had incidents when the CBFC beeped the word “intercourse” from an upcoming movie since it thought it was inappropriate and offensive to a section of people.

This drives us to the most important question. Is censorship essential in a democracy? Does censoring the content ensure internal security and validating the sentiments of the people at large? I guess not.

India is a country of more than 1.2 billion people. We take pride in calling ourselves multicultural, multilingual and a very tolerant (?) society. In a space like this, it is almost impossible to satisfy and appease all the sections of the society at once. What might offend you might not offend me.

Also, what is the need for such censorship, which is predominantly biased? I take the examples of movies like Grand Masti and Kyaa Kool hai hum (trust me there was nothing cool about it) which were cleared for release, while LMB was banned. Writing off all possible reasons, the remaining one is that the aforementioned movies had a male director and LMB is directed by a female, Alankrita Srivastava. So this implies that the CBFC is scared of letting the country watch and understand a woman’s perspective. This could also raise the question of plausible ‘connections’ of the stakeholders of those movies Grand Masti with the CBFC, which might even open a can of worms if probed. One might never know.

Thirdly, I would like to express my opinion that no art form must be subject to censorship. In a mature democracy, it must be left to the audience to decide what to take and what not to take home. Censorship of creative products like dance, music, books, and movies is definitely a sign of a very immature and idiosyncratic democracy.

Are we, as a society, being regressive? Not really. I think we have started moving towards being liberal and progressive in our thoughts related to a society and morality. We still have a long way to go though. Movies like LMB are a step in the right direction. I fear if this would fizzle out, without being used as a strong foundation to build a massive building which is progressive thoughts. Boards like the CBFC would do better in restricting themselves to just certifying movies and leave it at that. Let the audience do the bidding on the content of the movies.

Does the lipstick start a revolution? Yes, albeit in a very small scale. The summit that it is attempting to tame is huge with lots of layers to it. It needs consistency and sensibility to conquer it. It is going to be time-consuming, yet the effort will be worth it.