Shyam Benegal Rubbishes CBFC’s NOC Demand for Using Real Names

Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal reacts to CBFC’s demands for cuts to be made in Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘Indu Sarkar’.

“If someone wishes to wield a pair of scissors, it cannot be done without the concurrence of a film’s author, namely its director and producer. No one can just order ‘Cut this, cut that’,” says Shyam Benegal, who piloted a reform-seeking committee report on the contentious subject of film censorship, last year.

In the wake of the 14 cuts demanded of Madhur Bhandarkar’s upcoming film, Indu Sarkar, set against the backdrop of the Emergency rule of 1975-77, in an exclusive interview to The Quint, Benegal has expressed his ire and helplessness over the fact that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has virtually ignored the suggestions recommended by the committee.

“I haven’t seen Madhur Bhandarkar’s film, so I cannot comment on it. The job of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) is certainly not to interfere in a film. If real names have been taken, it’s up to those specific individuals or their surviving families to sue the filmmakers in court for libel.”

Shyam Benegal

The cuts demanded of Indu Sarkar include:

• The deletion of a newspaper cutting showing the names of Atal Behari Vajpayee, Morarji Desai and LK Advani.
• Objections have also been raised on the usage of the words: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Intelligence Bureau, Prime Minister, Akali, and 'Communist'.
• Moreover, a line of dialogue mentioning Mahatma Gandhi has been asked to be deleted.
• Another cut is asked for a scene showing a male character pleading, “I am 70 years old. Why make me go through nasbandi?”

Of late, An Insignificant Man a documentary on Arvind Kejriwal by Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla, and “the lady-oriented” Lipstick Under My Burkha have faced censorship flak. Meanwhile, it is also being conjectured that under-production films with a political agenda - notably a purported biopic on the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - would require an okay from the real-life personalities depicted.

Bring up the point that the politically-motivated film, Kissa Kursi Ka during the Congress rule, had been destroyed (it was reshot later), and Benegal states ruefully:

The problem is that our country doesn’t have a film policy at all. Everything changes and yet nothing changes.

Shyam Benegal, Filmmaker

The allusion is obviously to the ongoing arbitrary nature of the censor board, which, under the chairmanship of Pahlaj Nihalani seems to provoke a controversy a day.

The 82-year-old Shyam Benegal has often been the filmmaker-to-go-to for reform committees. With his customary cool, he says:

The committee for film censorship submitted two reports, one in April and then in October last year. The I&B Minister, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, had met a group of filmmakers and had said that much of the report had been accepted. To date, nothing has been implemented. Two different categories of the UA certificate had been suggested, a separate one for young viewers over the age of 15. The censors should not interfere in films or reshape cinema. They should rate a film and leave it that.

Shyam Benegal

So why head committees at all, sir? To that Benegal laughs gamely, “Because I’m incorrigible perhaps. I live on hope. Maybe things will change some day for the better. Till then vis-à-vis the highest power committees, the government will accept what works for it with alacrity. The rest is omitted without so much as a by-your-leave.”

(The writer is a film critic, filmmaker, theatre director and a weekend painter.)

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