Nothing could have been more blatantly political than the appointment of the people who constitute the new Central Board of Film Certification. For all the noise it made defending itself against the charge that there was far too much political influencing of film certification, particularly in the matter of MSG: The Messenger of God and the subsequent row which led to a spate of resignations from the board, the ruling dispensation seems to have gone the whole hog in making the entire appointment a political exercise.
The old board may have sported people friendly to the heads of the erstwhile Establishment, but there was no disputing that many of them were highly qualified in the matter of taking an aesthetic interest in art. What a censor board member needs to possess is a liberal mind in tune with public taste and the mood of the times and to take decision on cuts, etc., based on gumption. The idea is to look at art for what it is and not heed political background or overtones.
What we have now is a board in which there are very few known faces that can be said to have an artistic understanding of the art of cinema. So politicised has the process been that a man with an obviously political bent of mind is heading a board of people more likely to be ideologues than cineastes, politically inclined rather than aesthetically minded. The ministry has lost a fine opportunity to appoint people best qualified to judge films and take objective calls at a time when freedom of expression is under threat from special interest groups.
