 "Is Pahlaj Nihalani out to bury the Indian film industry?")
CBFC, led by filmmaker Pahlaj Nihalani, has asked the makers of Hindi film ‘Udta Punjab’ to remove the references to Punjab from the film and also suggested other cuts or changes in the film that talks about the issue of drug abuse in the north Indian state. Apparently the board does not want impressionable young (and not so young) minds to realise that drugs exist and Punjab has many users, lest they board the next Punjab Mail and land in the land of five rivers to get high.
The CBFC wants to protect the ‘good name’ of the state of Punjab from being besmirched by a film that highlights how drug abuse is a problem in the state. An AIIMS study had recently found that 4.5 per cent of all of Punjab’s adult population used drugs while 1.2 per cent of the adult population was addicted. That is six times the global average. Honesty doesn’t seem to be the best policy when it comes to honour etc. The board is also trying to shield young men and women from the bad business of drugs. Those young men and women may not wait for the board’s sanction however.
A friend of mine sent me a message last month asking me to recommend some western television shows. I gave him a list. He wasn’t a regular viewer of even English films earlier but now wanted to explore English television shows. In any get together with friends, many of whom come from small-towns, like I do, television shows are discussed and yet almost every one of them will swear they don’t watch television. By that they mean Indian television channels and yet almost all of them consume more televised content now than they did earlier. My cousins in my home-town too are now huge fans of various western shows, American, British or Scandinavian, they have seen them all. I doubt if anyone sought permission from the CBFC.
In the last five years or so, slowly but surely, western television has found audiences outside of only tony neighborhoods in the metros. It has increased as internet access and speeds have. A young generation exposed to the internet and bored of run-of-the-mill sagas on Indian television found their opium elsewhere. As Indian television became more and more stereotyped and a parody of itself, television shows in the US, the UK and in the Scandinavian countries ushered in the golden age of television. We had series after series, that highlighted brilliance in writing, acting, direction or cinematography and a section of Indian audiences armed with fast internet, torrent clients and subtitle files was hooked. While movies forced film-makers to tell stories that didn’t stretch beyond 2-3 hours, television allowed writers to take the stories further. Movie stars and directors joined in and destroyed all kinds of boundaries and found global audiences for their works.
This has spawned major changes. First, an Indian audience, reared on western content, now has a taste for world class television and now expects higher standards when it sits down and spends its time watching shows on laptops or television screens. Secondly, it has given up on Indian television. And finally, it is at ease with western sensibilities and comfortable with nudity, sex or abusive language on screen now. While television content regulation treats audiences like prurient schoolboys and ‘shields’ them from cleavages (yes, even they have been blurred at times), sexuality in general, smoking or alcohol (blurred wine bottles etc.), the audiences have moved on to content that they find better. The idiot box in India really has become the idiot box.
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This change hasn’t escaped Indian television networks completely. Hotstar, the digital and mobile content service of Star India recognized the change and now streams the latest episodes of Game of Thrones for Indian audiences to watch along with their American counterparts every week. Indian television content, with all its boundaries fixed by the content regulations and poor production values does not stand a chance.
This change has been slow (but not absent) when it comes to the movie medium. A new wave of film-makers changed the kind of films that come out of India. Audiences in the metros can now see some brilliant films made in Marathi, Tamil, Bangla, Kannada or Hindi while audiences even in small towns now watch dubbed Hollywood superhero films in local theatres. Indian films, much more than television, have pushed boundaries further but not nearly enough. These boundaries are now being redrawn closer and tighter by a film certification authority that wants to tell Indian film-makers what words their characters should speak, what acts they can or cannot do, which states their movies can or cannot be based in and what sexual orientation Indians can have. It would have been impossible for a Gangs of Wasseypur, a modern Indian classic, to be released under the current CBFC regime.
The golden age of television was made possible by brilliant writers, directors etc who weren’t forbidden from thinking or writing or talking about their inner thoughts. They pushed and obliterated boundaries and have made some classics. Some brilliant film-makers in India also try to push these boundaries and try to ‘Make in India’.
The path that Mr. Nihalani and others have pushed us on, will hurt the future prospects of our profitable film industry. Do we want to be a country where the local population only watches foreign content, legally or illegally? Do we want India’s film industry to resemble Pakistan’s film industry? Let us not try to force conservatism down their throats. Let us not forbid them from thinking. Let us not forbid an ‘Udta Punjab’ from flying.
The audiences are not beholden to Indian films. If films, limited in scope by Mr. Nihalani’s diktats don’t match up to their standards, they will move on to international options. Mr. Nihalani may not, but the audiences surely do live in the 21st century; even if it is on a laptop, with fast internet, torrents and subtitles.
Twitter: @bhayankur
