Censor board chief Pahlaj Nihlani has clearly made himself a subject of ridicule on the question of Udta Punjab, the film directed by Anurag Kashyap on the crucial issue of drug addiction in Punjab, where, according to an AIIMS study, the incidence of spread in the 15 to 35 age group is four times the international average. The censors have ordered some 90 cuts. Astonishingly, these include words like MP, MLA, and all place names, including Punjab. Appearing to be more loyal than the king — Mr Nihlani made people’s skin creep with the crass observation that he was proud to be PM Narendra Modi’s “chamcha”, or sycophant — the censor board chief appears to have taken a strictly political view of his remit.
He and his backers have argued that the film seeks to defame the northern state and its Akali-BJP leadership when Assembly polls are due in about eight months. Apparently it does no such thing. Eminent film-maker Shyam Benegal, who is the appellate authority on film censorship, has observed that the film is very well made. If the government is serious about not coming in the way of free expression (granted, no freedom is absolute), and to distance itself from the unusual judgment and embarrassing observations made by Mr Nihlani, it should seriously consider despatching the censor chief.
It is not enough to say that the Central Board of Film Certification is an autonomous body and the government does not interfere in its day-to-day working. The body may be autonomous but its chief was carefully chosen by the I&B ministry. The choice fell on someone the RSS-BJP government can depend on to do its ideological-political bidding. The only sensible statement from the government side so far has come from I&B minister Arun Jaitley, who indicated on Thursday that “very radical” changes were in the offing in the matter of film certification. If so, changing the CBFC chief will be in line with the government’s thinking.
There is a lesson here — that political positions relating to culture and education must not be filled with party hacks but by men and women of stature who command the attention of their peers even when they endorse a ruling party’s or government’s ideological stance. The choice of Mr Nihlani was sneered at by the film community (and others), given his thin resume, as had been the case earlier with the choice of the chief of the Indian Council of Historical Research.
