cUt! cUt! bAn! bAn!
On what it means and how it feels to be a creative artist in a Democracy, and to be censored...
By Murali Gopy
“The Illiterates of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” said Alvin Toffler. While speaking about the illiterates of the 21st century, one surely needs to paste a disclaimer before one goes into the perilous process of opening one’s heart, to the keyboard. So here it goes: “All characters and panels, depicted in this article are fictitious, and any resemblance to any demon or man, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”
It is the early hours of another ominous Friday, the 25th of August, 2017, as I key this in. Ten days have gone past, since India celebrated 71 years of her Independence, from the British, who, in the words of one of our most eloquent votaries of what I would call designer patriotism, left this land after gifting her “an era of darkness”. The darkest hour, my tricolour man, is now! And so, is the “finest hour”.
I’m unable to sleep. Unable to know from where I should start. But start, I must. Sleep, I ought to. My frustration, in my modest capacity as a writer, stems from the fact that I actually miss the British, because they gave us the silly solace (just about enough to battle this insistent insomnia) that we were actually fighting a foreign force, who were conveniently held responsible by us for all the ills that we saw here. They are gone. We remain. With no excuse left. And with no other way than to tackle ourselves.
It is almost like a zombie siege, now. We cannot even wink, for it’s our own legions, who have turned into white-walkers (thanks to GoT), braying for our red. The Indians of today sleep and wake up with the enemy within. The battle now is with one’s own alter ego, which makes love with a borrowed sex toy of liberal thought, comes on to the pseudo intellectual beds of unapologetically colonial bedrooms, and yet squeaks, squeals and moans, in absolute carnal bliss, about the Independence that we supposedly fetched up to our own throats, on that midnight of 71 years ago!
Are we Independent? Yes!
Are we free? No!
We are just glorified victims of sustained propaganda, that we are full-y free. Are we pint-free, then? No, again! We are just about quarter-free, and that too is a stingily scheduled quota served to us by every incoming Government, as a consolation prize dressed up as an award.
Every real citizen of this land, who I know of, holds a serious grouse in his or her heart— a cancerous complaint, which rots as deeply as it spreads widely into his and her being. It hurts him and her deeply, retires him and her prematurely, and finally, kills both with a deftly patronising sucker punch. Since I’m not Mahatma enough to identify entirely with these comrades of mine, let alone voice their concern, let me just push the keys to give at least a meek draft to my own turbulence, from where I stand.
And I warn you, seekers of Entertainment, that this would be a very, very boring read as it comes directly from a mind made dull by a cloud of hopelessness that stretches beyond immediate horizons. Before getting drawn into Cinema, which I once considered an effective placebo to the now platinum jubilee socio-political migraine that throbs and rages on at the temples of this land.., I was a journalist. By saying that, I just meant that I was into a business mostly and covertly controlled by vested interests but camouflaged by royal words such as “courage”, “accuracy” and “accountability”. Those were the days when we all told ourselves, with every rising sun, that in our hands was the beacon of truth.., only to douse the smoking stick of disappointment, with every setting sun, in the seas of community liquor that flowed in the self-assured, smug dungeons of fraternity clubs.
Even then, the little solace that I always served myself with, as “touchings", was that there was a destination, called Art, which I naively thought of, to have survived here like a lucky boat, braving this devious and deceptive sea of make believe democracy, with the great flag of creative freedom tied firmly to its shaky yet steely mast. This night, as I lie floating in the art and business of Cinema, I realise in misery.., that I was mistaken. Is Art free? No! It too is not! ‘Not Only’ is it not free, it is also... a ‘But Also’! A huge one at that! And how very sadly so!
Right from the time I started moving my pen for movies, I realised one thing. That even as the artist gives his ‘rooh’ into this moving sculpture called cinema, the system starts warming up its muscles to hop in and prefix an “F” to his ART.
The moment a film is ready to emerge, after gifting a kind of pain to its parent that is akin to Labour (or even more scream-worthy than that), its nemesis has already arrived at the vaginal door: a psychotic midwife, waiting to pounce at the newborn, eager to maim it into an invalid, and sadistically curious to know and see how the mother cries and how the father flounders at this!
Yes, I am referring to the Censor Board, that great and official grand dad of all moral policemen of this country, The ‘deliverer’ of the ‘right’ path. The State-sponsored bully. An autocratic jury, manned mostly by Toffler's illiterates and defaultly by blind supporters of the ruling class.
Here you are, in a self-patting democracy, subjecting a work of art, moreover, a work of creative expression, to the mercy of a few politically air-dropped people, who, in the name of safeguarding “propriety", end up becoming under-cover mercenaries to every incumbent government.
They unabashedly act on the non-printed diktats of the very ruling system, with which true Art has always waged its basic war with.
These masters of morality are elected with no transparent procedure. And they work to a totally repressive, outdated and prudish instruction sheet, which has been handed over to them by their predecessors, generation to generation. They judge films on the nerve and naivety of their own whim and illiteracy (Toffler's), with no panel or advocate other than the disgruntled filmmaker to stand up and speak for the film. Personal prejudice is given prime weightage. Artistic priorities are never given any. A one-sided verdict is passed, punishments meted out and sentences carried out at ‘gunpoint’, in a style that would put even Joseph Stalin to shame! Tell me, are we free?
Great conspiring and mole work allegedly happen, in the dark of the Censor screenings. And since moviemaking is a business that runs on deadlines, with big money spent on the production, it becomes a silicon-soft target for the bullies. Every artist is made to nod like domesticated puppies, in front of the CB hawks, to get his or her movie out without random cuts, cruel bruises and brutal beheadings. A free and total emergence almost never happens, unless you have made a lame, pointless comedy, replete with masked innuendos!
Pains are taken, by the Board, to hurt any important film, deliberately. It is an easy job for them since misreading its content and missing its point come naturally to them. And of course, they are seemingly selected on the basis of their talent to patronise! Appalling, to say the least, is the average lack of creative education and a true knowledge of history and culture that is on display on the Censor Boards across the nation. There are exceptions though, but what use is a lovely rose of, if it adorns the inner wall of a septic tank!? Things at a Censor screening are, in no way, different from how a Caligula or a Mussolini or a Hitler would have treated creativity in their hey day; the only difference being the absence of capital punishment. But then, my dear friends, you don’t have to kill a real artist physically. You only have to kill his art, to see him dead. And that is precisely what such boards are aiming at and accomplishing almost fully.
Censoring Art is a completely unacceptable process in a democracy. But it is futile to say such a thing in a country where even basic points of decent existence, let alone civilisation, are yet to be driven home. Where patriarchy is mistaken for culture, morality is mistaken for correctness, arrogance is mistaken for uprightness and brashness is mistaken for strength.., it is only natural for dangerous foolishness to rule over the subtle and the sublime. Scissors, I tell you, have never ever in history been used as a weapon of mass destruction, as it is being used now by the Indian Censor Board!
In a film on Gandhi, they will ask you to keep Godse but avoid the gunshot and blood!
In the story of Christ, Magdalene cannot be pelted stones at, and Jesus cannot be crucified!
Siddhartha's palatial excesses cannot be shown; only Buddha will be allowed to speak!
Of Krishna, you’d see only the flute; Raasa and Leela would be chopped off at the neck!
Parasurama will be forced to sign a peace agreement with Kartavirya Arjuna!
Moses can have his staff, but cannot make the Dead Sea part!
No man will abuse another, other than through a beep! No woman will be harmed! No animal or bird shall be hurt! No chopping of meat would be shown! No stab! No blood! Praising the incumbent government will be allowed! Criticisms of the same, would be A-xed! No vigilante can act! No, no love either!. No kiss for today’s kids, for they would become morally astray! Not even “intercourse”, for today’s kids are all immaculately conceived!! We still are discussing fiction here, mind you.
And what about the adults? Well, the humanoids of the Censor Board will decide how adult is an adult, in this unfortunate country!!! If the creator decides to stand his/her ground, the danger is the award of the famed “A” certificate; there is a business angle to this. If your film is restricted to adults, the business would be cut down by a staggering 60 per cent at the marquee. And no television channel would take it in either. This is precisely the point where our filmmakers are forced to kneel to tyranny. The market pressure would be so great that they would have to nod to all the cuts, beeps and chops whatsoever.
Even a bold, brave film can be disarmed, castrated, ostracised, banned and even beheaded, this way. And no one, except the victim, would come to know of this injustice. But, of course, there are exceptions. Affluence does count, says Mr. Reportedly: "And if one is affluent enough, one may climb the wall, have the way, and the route map too!" And thus, you watch films where the super hero hunts and kills, within his radius, almost all the animals of a particular cat family (which is considered the National Animal and tops the endangered species list of almost all Wildlife organisations around the world), and still gets away with a ‘U’ certificate! Poaching is Universal, eh? So, the point here is that even in unfairness, there is indiscipline!
Let us remind ourselves, here, for at least once, that fiction is a major tool of self-hypnosis for a society.
Fiction is the only manna for social rejuvenation.
It is a major off-line vent to all tendencies human.
It is the only mirror a grieving society has to show itself and to the rest of the world as to what exactly is transpiring within.
It is a foreteller.
It is a warning light.
That fiction must be let free of all regulations, is only a basic social health lesson. But, unfortunately, we still live in a land, where basic lessons are taught after the complex ones are, and not the other way around.
It’s here that the fulcrum point of this note of desperation needs to be stressed upon. Since Art in general and Cinema in particular involves and invokes the anciently formulated yet precious Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, it is imperative that a regulatory body, if at all it is compulsory, must at least be appointed by the Judiciary and not the Government, after taking into extensive consideration the ability of each member to rise beyond the dictations of politics and prejudice, and stay true to the cause of free artistic expression. And, of course, their duty must only be to issue an age-bar certification and not to cut and ban!
If not, we would be consciously ordering the euthanasia of all things reflective of the times we live in. While Cinema is thus chloroform-ed into silence, life takes its toll uncensored. Elsewhere, my friends, out in the real, people are lynched by the minute, women are raped by the second, corruption is ruling by the daylight, children are feeding on infinite and unbridled sources of extreme porn and violence online, television channels are gorging on literally everything below the belt, social inequality is scaling up dangerously and jingoism is rising to alarming levels.
Art is just the shadow cast on the screens of time, when the light of truth falls on what is happening around. And here we are, chasing the shadow and letting the beast be! The truth is if we cannot contain life, which we certainly cannot, we cannot and must not try to contain Art as well.
As of now, the screen remains so clean... that it is not even the weak placebo that it once seemed to be, thanks to you, exalted ones of the Censor Board. You have succeeded in making Indian Cinema a living vegetable.
Till this twisted equation gets corrected for good, may you continue to render all newborns invalid!
May you relish your maiming act.
And may you make “the United States (of India)... great again”. 
By Murali Gopy
“The Illiterates of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” said Alvin Toffler. While speaking about the illiterates of the 21st century, one surely needs to paste a disclaimer before one goes into the perilous process of opening one’s heart, to the keyboard. So here it goes: “All characters and panels, depicted in this article are fictitious, and any resemblance to any demon or man, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”
It is the early hours of another ominous Friday, the 25th of August, 2017, as I key this in. Ten days have gone past, since India celebrated 71 years of her Independence, from the British, who, in the words of one of our most eloquent votaries of what I would call designer patriotism, left this land after gifting her “an era of darkness”. The darkest hour, my tricolour man, is now! And so, is the “finest hour”.
I’m unable to sleep. Unable to know from where I should start. But start, I must. Sleep, I ought to. My frustration, in my modest capacity as a writer, stems from the fact that I actually miss the British, because they gave us the silly solace (just about enough to battle this insistent insomnia) that we were actually fighting a foreign force, who were conveniently held responsible by us for all the ills that we saw here. They are gone. We remain. With no excuse left. And with no other way than to tackle ourselves.
It is almost like a zombie siege, now. We cannot even wink, for it’s our own legions, who have turned into white-walkers (thanks to GoT), braying for our red. The Indians of today sleep and wake up with the enemy within. The battle now is with one’s own alter ego, which makes love with a borrowed sex toy of liberal thought, comes on to the pseudo intellectual beds of unapologetically colonial bedrooms, and yet squeaks, squeals and moans, in absolute carnal bliss, about the Independence that we supposedly fetched up to our own throats, on that midnight of 71 years ago!
Are we Independent? Yes!
Are we free? No!
We are just glorified victims of sustained propaganda, that we are full-y free. Are we pint-free, then? No, again! We are just about quarter-free, and that too is a stingily scheduled quota served to us by every incoming Government, as a consolation prize dressed up as an award.
Every real citizen of this land, who I know of, holds a serious grouse in his or her heart— a cancerous complaint, which rots as deeply as it spreads widely into his and her being. It hurts him and her deeply, retires him and her prematurely, and finally, kills both with a deftly patronising sucker punch. Since I’m not Mahatma enough to identify entirely with these comrades of mine, let alone voice their concern, let me just push the keys to give at least a meek draft to my own turbulence, from where I stand.
And I warn you, seekers of Entertainment, that this would be a very, very boring read as it comes directly from a mind made dull by a cloud of hopelessness that stretches beyond immediate horizons. Before getting drawn into Cinema, which I once considered an effective placebo to the now platinum jubilee socio-political migraine that throbs and rages on at the temples of this land.., I was a journalist. By saying that, I just meant that I was into a business mostly and covertly controlled by vested interests but camouflaged by royal words such as “courage”, “accuracy” and “accountability”. Those were the days when we all told ourselves, with every rising sun, that in our hands was the beacon of truth.., only to douse the smoking stick of disappointment, with every setting sun, in the seas of community liquor that flowed in the self-assured, smug dungeons of fraternity clubs.
Even then, the little solace that I always served myself with, as “touchings", was that there was a destination, called Art, which I naively thought of, to have survived here like a lucky boat, braving this devious and deceptive sea of make believe democracy, with the great flag of creative freedom tied firmly to its shaky yet steely mast. This night, as I lie floating in the art and business of Cinema, I realise in misery.., that I was mistaken. Is Art free? No! It too is not! ‘Not Only’ is it not free, it is also... a ‘But Also’! A huge one at that! And how very sadly so!
Right from the time I started moving my pen for movies, I realised one thing. That even as the artist gives his ‘rooh’ into this moving sculpture called cinema, the system starts warming up its muscles to hop in and prefix an “F” to his ART.
The moment a film is ready to emerge, after gifting a kind of pain to its parent that is akin to Labour (or even more scream-worthy than that), its nemesis has already arrived at the vaginal door: a psychotic midwife, waiting to pounce at the newborn, eager to maim it into an invalid, and sadistically curious to know and see how the mother cries and how the father flounders at this!
Yes, I am referring to the Censor Board, that great and official grand dad of all moral policemen of this country, The ‘deliverer’ of the ‘right’ path. The State-sponsored bully. An autocratic jury, manned mostly by Toffler's illiterates and defaultly by blind supporters of the ruling class.
Here you are, in a self-patting democracy, subjecting a work of art, moreover, a work of creative expression, to the mercy of a few politically air-dropped people, who, in the name of safeguarding “propriety", end up becoming under-cover mercenaries to every incumbent government.
They unabashedly act on the non-printed diktats of the very ruling system, with which true Art has always waged its basic war with.
These masters of morality are elected with no transparent procedure. And they work to a totally repressive, outdated and prudish instruction sheet, which has been handed over to them by their predecessors, generation to generation. They judge films on the nerve and naivety of their own whim and illiteracy (Toffler's), with no panel or advocate other than the disgruntled filmmaker to stand up and speak for the film. Personal prejudice is given prime weightage. Artistic priorities are never given any. A one-sided verdict is passed, punishments meted out and sentences carried out at ‘gunpoint’, in a style that would put even Joseph Stalin to shame! Tell me, are we free?
Great conspiring and mole work allegedly happen, in the dark of the Censor screenings. And since moviemaking is a business that runs on deadlines, with big money spent on the production, it becomes a silicon-soft target for the bullies. Every artist is made to nod like domesticated puppies, in front of the CB hawks, to get his or her movie out without random cuts, cruel bruises and brutal beheadings. A free and total emergence almost never happens, unless you have made a lame, pointless comedy, replete with masked innuendos!
Pains are taken, by the Board, to hurt any important film, deliberately. It is an easy job for them since misreading its content and missing its point come naturally to them. And of course, they are seemingly selected on the basis of their talent to patronise! Appalling, to say the least, is the average lack of creative education and a true knowledge of history and culture that is on display on the Censor Boards across the nation. There are exceptions though, but what use is a lovely rose of, if it adorns the inner wall of a septic tank!? Things at a Censor screening are, in no way, different from how a Caligula or a Mussolini or a Hitler would have treated creativity in their hey day; the only difference being the absence of capital punishment. But then, my dear friends, you don’t have to kill a real artist physically. You only have to kill his art, to see him dead. And that is precisely what such boards are aiming at and accomplishing almost fully.
Censoring Art is a completely unacceptable process in a democracy. But it is futile to say such a thing in a country where even basic points of decent existence, let alone civilisation, are yet to be driven home. Where patriarchy is mistaken for culture, morality is mistaken for correctness, arrogance is mistaken for uprightness and brashness is mistaken for strength.., it is only natural for dangerous foolishness to rule over the subtle and the sublime. Scissors, I tell you, have never ever in history been used as a weapon of mass destruction, as it is being used now by the Indian Censor Board!
In a film on Gandhi, they will ask you to keep Godse but avoid the gunshot and blood!
In the story of Christ, Magdalene cannot be pelted stones at, and Jesus cannot be crucified!
Siddhartha's palatial excesses cannot be shown; only Buddha will be allowed to speak!
Of Krishna, you’d see only the flute; Raasa and Leela would be chopped off at the neck!
Parasurama will be forced to sign a peace agreement with Kartavirya Arjuna!
Moses can have his staff, but cannot make the Dead Sea part!
No man will abuse another, other than through a beep! No woman will be harmed! No animal or bird shall be hurt! No chopping of meat would be shown! No stab! No blood! Praising the incumbent government will be allowed! Criticisms of the same, would be A-xed! No vigilante can act! No, no love either!. No kiss for today’s kids, for they would become morally astray! Not even “intercourse”, for today’s kids are all immaculately conceived!! We still are discussing fiction here, mind you.
And what about the adults? Well, the humanoids of the Censor Board will decide how adult is an adult, in this unfortunate country!!! If the creator decides to stand his/her ground, the danger is the award of the famed “A” certificate; there is a business angle to this. If your film is restricted to adults, the business would be cut down by a staggering 60 per cent at the marquee. And no television channel would take it in either. This is precisely the point where our filmmakers are forced to kneel to tyranny. The market pressure would be so great that they would have to nod to all the cuts, beeps and chops whatsoever.
Even a bold, brave film can be disarmed, castrated, ostracised, banned and even beheaded, this way. And no one, except the victim, would come to know of this injustice. But, of course, there are exceptions. Affluence does count, says Mr. Reportedly: "And if one is affluent enough, one may climb the wall, have the way, and the route map too!" And thus, you watch films where the super hero hunts and kills, within his radius, almost all the animals of a particular cat family (which is considered the National Animal and tops the endangered species list of almost all Wildlife organisations around the world), and still gets away with a ‘U’ certificate! Poaching is Universal, eh? So, the point here is that even in unfairness, there is indiscipline!
Let us remind ourselves, here, for at least once, that fiction is a major tool of self-hypnosis for a society.
Fiction is the only manna for social rejuvenation.
It is a major off-line vent to all tendencies human.
It is the only mirror a grieving society has to show itself and to the rest of the world as to what exactly is transpiring within.
It is a foreteller.
It is a warning light.
That fiction must be let free of all regulations, is only a basic social health lesson. But, unfortunately, we still live in a land, where basic lessons are taught after the complex ones are, and not the other way around.
It’s here that the fulcrum point of this note of desperation needs to be stressed upon. Since Art in general and Cinema in particular involves and invokes the anciently formulated yet precious Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, it is imperative that a regulatory body, if at all it is compulsory, must at least be appointed by the Judiciary and not the Government, after taking into extensive consideration the ability of each member to rise beyond the dictations of politics and prejudice, and stay true to the cause of free artistic expression. And, of course, their duty must only be to issue an age-bar certification and not to cut and ban!
If not, we would be consciously ordering the euthanasia of all things reflective of the times we live in. While Cinema is thus chloroform-ed into silence, life takes its toll uncensored. Elsewhere, my friends, out in the real, people are lynched by the minute, women are raped by the second, corruption is ruling by the daylight, children are feeding on infinite and unbridled sources of extreme porn and violence online, television channels are gorging on literally everything below the belt, social inequality is scaling up dangerously and jingoism is rising to alarming levels.
Art is just the shadow cast on the screens of time, when the light of truth falls on what is happening around. And here we are, chasing the shadow and letting the beast be! The truth is if we cannot contain life, which we certainly cannot, we cannot and must not try to contain Art as well.
As of now, the screen remains so clean... that it is not even the weak placebo that it once seemed to be, thanks to you, exalted ones of the Censor Board. You have succeeded in making Indian Cinema a living vegetable.
Till this twisted equation gets corrected for good, may you continue to render all newborns invalid!
May you relish your maiming act.
And may you make “the United States (of India)... great again”. 
posted by Murali Gopy at 3:46 AM
42 comments
