The controversy surrounding Udta Punjab, refuses to die down. While the censor board reportedly demanded that the movie make about 40 cuts earlier, the revision committee has not only asked for more than double the number of cuts, but has also directed that the filmmaker Abhishek Chaubey to drop references to Punjab entirely (including in the film’s title).
The film, which was to be released on June 17, is delayed by at least a month, while the producers Phantom Films and Balaji Motion Pictures battle it out with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), possibly even in court. The movie first got into trouble thanks to ‘excessive swearing,’ and now it has seemed to have landed itself in a bigger soup for allegedly ‘showing Punjab in poor light’.
One of the movie’s producers, Anurag Kashyap, whose debut film Paanch is yet to see the light of day because of censor woes, took to Twitter to rant about this — “I always wondered what it felt like to live in North Korea,” he said as part of another tweet. “Ab to plane pakadney ki bhi zarurat nahin. (sic)”
Later the filmmaker was seen on multiple news channels, blaming censor board chief, Pahlaj Nihalani for deliberately stalling Udta Punjab by withholding the official certificate of cuts. “I don’t want Nihalani to play God to my films. I’ve only started having this problem with the censor board in the last two years. All filmmakers are fed up of Nihalani. I hope the government addresses our concerns,” he fumed. He went on to say how the controversial CBFC chief is considering it payback time for when he was pulled up by the I&B ministry during Bombay Velvet.
The problem, says producer and director Vikram Bhatt, lies with the Information and Broadcast Ministry, and not the examining committee. “My guess is that this is happening because there’s a diktat from above,” muses Bhatt. He adds, “It’s not possible that there are so many jokes, tweets and media attention given to Udta Punjab and that the I&B ministry does not know about it. So, either they are sitting back and letting this kind of heavy and dictatorial censorship take place, which is sad, or they are watching this and it is something of their doing, which is even sadder. I think that making the Censor Board a whipping horse is something that is working for the I&B dept.”
Many are of the opinion that this time around, the move is politically motivated. “It is not a coincidence that the Akalis rule Punjab and are in a coalition partnership with the BJP, the government in power at the centre,” says Mayank. “There are elections slated for next year and this is a film on the drug problem in Punjab which has a very strong link to the political structure there. All these factor in for the problem that the film faces right now.”
Ashoke Pandit, filmmaker and a board member with the CBFC reacted saying, “The decision of not allowing Punjab is condemnable and a mockery of expression of a filmmaker. Does this mean if I have to make a film on my genocide and ethnic cleansing, I can’t use the word Kashmir? This is a dangerous trend. Going by Nihalani’s logic, issue based classics like Salam Bombay, which dealt with prostitution, Bombay that dealt with riots and New Delhi Times that dealt with corruption would have never released.”
Anurag, on the other hand, tweeted to other political parties to try and not to make this fight about political affiliations. “I request Congress, AAP and other political parties to stay out of my battle. It’s my rights versus the censorship. I speak only on my behalf. It’s my fight versus a dictatorial man sitting there operating like an oligarch in his constituency of censor board, that’s my North Korea. Don’t colour my fight with any political affiliations, because there is none,” he said.
