Bhojpuri Film On Babri Masjid Gets Banned By the Censor Board

The CBFC has banned a film based on the Babri Masjid controversy for its communal context.

Bhojpuri superstar Khesari Lal Yadav probably didn’t know what he was getting into when he decided to do a film called Babri Masjid. A crude and kitschy take on the politics of communalism in Ayodhya, the film has been unceremoniously banned by the Censor Board Of Film Certification (CBFC).

Grassroot politics at its most disruptive and disturbing. The film treats the communal divide as a platform for crude and loud Hindu-Muslim comments. It is likely to fuel communal tensions in not just Uttar Pradesh but across the country.

A source from the Censor Board

The film has been denied a censor certificate… a first for a Bhojpuri film.

Directed by a certain Dev Pandey, the film’s trailer shows priests in saffron locking horns with their counterparts in flowing beards, slamming each other with crude rhetorics. These rabble-rousing scenes are intercut with Bhojpuri superstar Khesari Lal Yadav, wooing his co-star with risqué songs with chorus dancers gyrating suggestively.

This is the first time a Bhojpuri film has been banned.And it’s not because the content is crude. It’s because the crude content is applied to an issue as sensitive the Babri Masjid. We don’t only deny a certificate to the film we will also caution the  I & B ministry of the content to ensure the film doesn’t get a sympathetic viewing by so-called liberal elements.

Source, CBFC