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  Smooch ado about nothing

Smooch ado about nothing

| KHALID MOHAMED
Published : Nov 27, 2015, 10:21 pm IST
Updated : Nov 27, 2015, 10:21 pm IST

Flip a coin: heads he stays, tails he goes. The guessing game is on. Following a controversy-a-day will the chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification be shown the door

Flip a coin: heads he stays, tails he goes. The guessing game is on. Following a controversy-a-day will the chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification be shown the door Or will the ruling party — in a bid to save face — give him a warning and permit the bête noire to do what he’s worst at

Questions, questions. Whatever the answer, the damage has been done. Within a year, the Bharatiya Janata Party appointee Pahlaj Nihalani has skedaddled on the kind of film-scissoring spree which will be remembered with a seismic shudder for years, if not posterity. In the manner of an amateur tailor, the chairman has reduced cinema from riches to rags, literally.

Plus, there’s his panegyric of a song for Prime Minister Narendra Modi — Mera desh hai mahaan — going gaga over a trio of junior artistes striving to step into the funky footwear of Amar Akbar Anthony. The quickie promo, replete with stock shots, also has this wise idea of assembling a group of delighted kids to chant, “O Modi kaka.” Erm. A shot of Union finance minister Arun Jaitley was also edited in, presumably to salute his clout in the uppermost corridors of power.

Cluck or chuckle over that song. Mr Nihalani’s more-loyal-than-the-king intentions have backfired. Not done. Propaganda requires intelligence, not obsequiousness. Moreover, there have been lessons to learn from the past. When the Films Division of India released the documentary, The Prime Minister (1976) during the Emergency, which included shots demonising Jayaprakash Narayan, the Congress had to wipe egg from their face.

At this very moment, ceaseless salvos are being fired at Nihalani Kaka, who reportedly is on his way out according to a section of the media. Another section claims that he’s a stayer. Yet from all accounts, the ruling party and the ministry of information and broadcasting, in particular, are embarrassed.

If they don’t back Mr Nihalani, they lose face. If they do, it is tantamount to accepting the fact that they have made a boo-boo. The decision, at time of writing, is billowing in the wind. On the cheerier side of things, if Mr Nihalani is given the heave-ho, not only can James Bond kiss at leisure, ditto Emraan Hashmi, Deepika Padukone, Sunny Leone, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and so many more of their ilk, endowed with lucky lips.

Inadvertently the brouhaha over those Spectre liplocks could well sort out the killjoy state of affairs at the censor board. But seriously, there’s an overall sense of high hope about Mr Nihalani’s exit, compounded albeit by apprehension. Who or what next None of the chairpersons has been progressive in the long and winding history of film censorship which is still bound by the Cinematograph Act of 1952.

Currently, the murmur is that the monolithic board should “certify” films and not “censor” them, a suggestion which sounds as imponderable as the Da Vinci code. As it is, the “U, U/A and Adults Only” categories, have frequently led to arbitrary certifications. Surely, adding more categories isn’t the solution. More, in this case, wouldn’t certainly be the merrier.

Undoubtedly, such half-measures in film censorship would be as unacceptable and sexist as watchdogging the cut and style of sarongs and bikinis. Moreover, as long as the appointment of the chairperson and the members of the board’s advisory committee hinge on political connection, censorship will remain as questionable as the credentials of a majority of the scissorhands.

Believe it or not, secretaries of Bollywood stars, assorted acolytes and know-nothings comprise the censorship elite which is claimed to be drawn from “all walks of life”. How’s that for obfuscation really Submit the examining members to an elementary test on cinema, and the percentage of those who pass the grade, will be revealing to say the least.

Perhaps to date, the stalwart filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee stands out as the most cinema-sensitive of the chairpersons. Not surprisingly, he quit after 18 months (February 1981-August 1982). Nihalani’s predecessor, classical dancer Leela Samson, displayed an exemplary upright approach but being far from the madding crowd as such, couldn’t become that much-wanted broom who could sweep clean. In fact, during her tenure, an instance of gross corruption surfaced, vis-à-vis the board’s CEO.

Quite curiously — or should one say interestingly — as film censorship’s most quirky chief, Mr Nihalani is far removed from his mild-mannered persona in real life. I have seen him to be courteous in his interaction with the media and with the film industry at large during his tenure as the president of the Association of Motion Picture and TV Programme Producers.

In that context, though, I would cite an instance which did leave me flummoxed. On inquiring what could be done about a prominent film producer who hadn’t paid the fees to some of the acting crew and the director, although the film had made profits, he said politely, “Don’t worry, I’ll look into it”. Regretfully and unpredictably, he didn’t.

Similarly, Mr Nihalani hasn’t cared to gauge the protests which have mounted against him as a censor chief. In addition, the valid strike of the students of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, sparked his absurd overreaction that they the protesters were “anti-national” — adding to the public concern over intolerance in diverse fields of creative expression.

Call it intolerance or brashness, Mr Nihalani with his statements and film censorship diktats was bound to encourage a mutiny on the bounty. Concurrently, the minister of state for information and broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore has said one thing, Mr Nihalani another, setting off an ambience of uncertainty.

Lamentably, Mr Nihalani and his scant few defenders seem to have gone amnesiac about the fact that the muzzling of the press during the Emergency was a significant factor in the reversal of the fortunes of the Congress.

And that’s the rub actually. As long as the government institutions set up to elevate rather than obstruct film culture are coloured by politics, the sorry status quo can never change, for the better at least.

Indeed, one suffers from vertigo on looking back at the year, almost gone by. Quite a few of the banned films merit reconsideration. And quite a few positive reforms require to be formulated and implemented.

If it’s the quitting hour for Mr Nihalani, he won’t be missed. Unless, of course, that censor board office with a grand view of Mumbai’s ocean front, still has issues with something as natural as kissing, colloquial dialogue and freedom of ideological expression. Come to think of it, vis-à-vis film censorship the year gone by, so far, has been a first of its kind anywhere in the world: smooch ado about nothing.

The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director