The word “bloody” referring to Indians may have been part of numerous Bollywood films based in the colonial era, but director Vibhu Puri was asked to replace the word with a milder term in his film Hawaizaada. Manmohan Desai’s Mard to Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan are a few examples of films that had the term; however, Vibhu’s film won’t.
Says an exasperated Puri, “I had no choice but to replace the word ‘bloody Indian’ with ‘crazy Indian’. I am aware that the Britishers in our earlier films have been shown to use the term ‘bloody Indian’, but if I had insisted on using it, I’d have got a ‘UA’ certificate instead of ‘U’. So I preferred to change the supposedly offensive word as it made no difference to my narrative.”
Vibhu tells us that he was also asked to replace a word prefixing a holy book in the soundtrack. Adds Vibhu, “Since it’s a religious matter this cut makes more sense to me. But the other cut does seem a bit crazy. But I am happy that the censor board didn’t cut a single shot in my film.”
