Censor Board on rampage

The template for the Censor Board was set a few months after the BJP stormed to power in Delhi. So it should be no surprise that Amartya Sen, one of the earliest critics of the government’s alternative vision of India, should find himself at the receiving end of its ministrations. A documentary on the Nobel laureate has been asked to mute all words anathema to the Modi government: cow, Gujarat and Hindutva. Pahlaj Nihalani’s appointment as the Censor Board chief was payback time for a loyal home boy. After all, his CV boasts of a six-minute campaign video “Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi” for the 2014 general election. 

Since then Nihalani has not disappointed his mentors and played their political game, albeit with unapologetic stupidity ever since he took over from Leela Samson. It needs to be recalled that Leela Samson quit protesting against “unbearable pressure” to clear a movie by self-proclaimed saint Gurmit Ram Rahim who paid back with crucial political support to the BJP in Haryana and the Akali-BJP in Punjab. In a blatant act of door-keeping for the government, Nihalani had earlier stopped the certification of a film on the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots that paved the way for the BJP’s electoral sweep in western UP. The Modi government appointee is not just policing political content. He is also bearing down on liberal and broader exploration of issues of gender, sexuality, religion and communalism. 

In other words, the Censor Board’s axe can fall on any view that strays from the Sangh Parivar’s narrow definition of an ideal society. So Lipstick Under My Burqa was deemed “too lady oriented” and Oscar-nominate Danish Girl “unsuitable for children.” Besides the danger of the government discouraging a scrutiny of its actions, which is the lifeblood of any democracy, technology has outpaced censorship. Documentaries, unlike Bollywood movies, pick up their audiences from online views and the film circuit in Western Europe. Even if the Amartya Sen documentary was completely banned, it would still be viewed and should recoup the investment. The only upshot is that India starts looking like a pale shadow of the countries it criticises.