Author: Amaldas, C
Publication Year: 2023
Keywords: Censorship,Bollywood 1998 2018,India Film Regulatory Controversies
Abstract: The prominent debates around film censorship in India mostly revolved around its institutionalised practice as the state was seen as the primary regulator of public content till the 1990s. Until then, there had been instances of social and communal agents interfering in the process of content regulation through social rules and codes but they never led to consistent widespread discussions or frequent law and order situations for the state to intervene. But in the 1990s, a dramatic shift happened in the debates, as a new regime of film regulation arose which operated through decentralised local mobilisations against creative expressions, social commentary and public figures. Such mobilisations were also stirred against films. They defied all the defined legal statutes. institutional framework and sophisticated conduct in a constitutional republic like India to violently pursue their demands of excision or ban of films. As said before, most of their regulatory demands revolved around communal sentiments like religious faith. regionalism, social belongingness, and patriotism and their actions have been publicly justified on such sentiments being hurt. This shift definitely has its roots in the complex socio-political Indian scenario of the 1990s, since there were a number of significant changes that shook the structure of Indian polity to the core. The liberalisation of the Indian economy, the sudden rise of far-right politics, especially Hindu nationalism. growing popular contempt against the Indian democratic state, and the arrival of commercial television have been some of the complex changes that happened since then and all of them have, in one way or the other, contributed to the rise of a new mode of film regulation.
There are many studies on the topic of film censorship in India and some among them have touched on this complicated area and offer illuminating observations about external agents working as censors. They have gone into detail to show how they operate, and what impact such regulatory outrages have on Indian public culture, but only recognise the protests as the result of a cultural shock created through the spreading of more liberal visual content with the arrival of commercial television and multiplex cinema halls. And they point to the rise of far-right politics as an immediate cause of the regulatory outrages instigated by the new leisurely visual content. This thesis argues that such a framework limits the scope of studies as they only look at the regulatory controversies as outbursts of a regressive, feudal and conservative
subjectivity Indian polity has preserved for long. And they cite far-right political groups for channelising the fears of an orthodox society suddenly perplexed by the influx of morally liberal content. This study attempts to move forward by suggesting the possibilities of a framework that would probe the regulatory controversies against films in the backdrop of the structural changes occurring in Indian society after the 1990s. Here, the emphasis is given for mapping the changes in class dynamics, hegemonic power bloc prevalent in society, mode of production, and the restructuring of the Indian market for foreign private investments and how all of them have contributed to the rise of new public ruled by local groups mobilised around communal claims. The study attempts to throw light into the complex arena of how mobilisations against films contribute to the legitimacy of a hegemonic power bloc with class interests along the lines of neoliberal economic doctrine which is steered by the cultural nationalist outlook of Hindu nationalism. The ideological hegemony of this bloc is upheld and strengthened through these local mobilisations and the study attempts to prove that cinema as a popular medium of entertainment became the most contested site for them to organise.
The 1990s saw the rise of regional protests by many communal organisations against films across India citing the content, ideological premise and aesthetics that have hurt the sentiments of the communities they claimed to represent. Such protests revolved around the notion of India's "national culture" and how the new filmic representations either fail to portray them or obscure them. Protesters resorted to many forms of mobilisations to have the attention of both the state and the larger population and at times adopted violent measures as pressure tactics. Demonstrations being held on streets, burning posters of the actors and the films, using vandalism to stop the screening of films, verhal vituperations and smear campaigns, and forcing the state to recall proceedings on exhibition to have representations from protesters on approving the film are some of the most common techniques used by these protesters. These groups have organised against films that were framed as anti-national, anti-religious. and anti-regional and asked to remove scenes from them or totally ban them. Such mobilisations had occurred even before the 1990s but their intensity and frequency reached a fever pitch after the 1990s. This is totally unprecedented considering the existing institutional film regulatory practices in India as more regional and communal groups began claiming authority over the process and the content of the films exhibited and they seek to bring in a parallel regime for monitoring films. The violent protests that happened against films like Famaa (2006). Singh Is Kinng (2008), My Name is Khan (2010), Vishwaroopam (2013), PK (2014) and the latest Pathaan (2023) all point to the emergence of such a tendency through which regional groups assert control over the existing institutions for regulating cinematic content.
The work is primarily aiming to study a chosen number of regulatory controversies that happened after the liberalisation of the Indian economy and link them with the structural changes that happened during the period. A distinction must be made between the institutional censorial practices and the new phenomenon by understanding the socio-political changes that happened after the 1990s by mapping regulatory controversies against films. The study also seeks to find continuations from the period of institutional censorial practices by tracing the evolution of the Indian film censorship regime. So, this work aspires to build an argument that changes in the economic policy and the resulting reorientation in the general policymaking and the eventual structural changes in the society even affect the debate around film censorship and can bring up new agents for regulating content. And, what happened after the 1990s is definitely new but not just a cultural phenomenon that arose out of the insecurities of a regressive. conservative and feudal society but also the result of sweeping changes brought by neoliberalism.
External political and social agents interfering in the institutional operation of film censorship is an illuminating field of study. Such agents force the state to how down to their demands by terrorising society through violent mobilisations and ensuing vandalism. This is in sharp contradiction to the prevalent film censorship debates and practices in India and points to the involvement of larger political factors and structural changes. Such a complicated scenario certainly demands more questions to understand it and also needs studies to map it in a nuanced framework. And there have been many illuminating studies dealing with film censorship which also dedicated space to discuss the new phenomenon in detail. Works of Someswar Bhowmik, Priya Jaikumar, Monika Mehta and William Mazzarella problematise the phenomenon of socio-political groups staging protests against films based on claims around communal sentiments. And all these studies offer keen observations about it and the socio-cultural implications of such a new trend. But they all share a bleak outlook and argue that content regulation as a social process is inevitable and the brutal forms of its operation can not be resisted. This study differs from the bleak outlook about the inevitability of censorship and tries to signal the possibility of a new framework in which the content regulation is approached as the result of far-reaching structural changes brought into Indian society through the arrival of a new doctrine of economic policy. Here, the changes in the social composition that happened after the liberalisation of the Indian economy are taken as the primary focal point. How such a shift has generated numerous complications in Indian society is also discussed to build a backdrop to show the rise of a new type of politics by which assertions based on communal sentiments started gaining currency. A detailed account of the political developments is placed along with the history of film exhibitions and censorship in India and the account of the rise of new corporatised forms of film production with the arrival of foreign capital. How the rise of far-right politics in India, especially of Hindu nationalism, is linked with the complex Indian social scenario and the rise of regulatory mobilisations against films is also explored in this study.
The study limits its scope to only outrages instigated by the Hindu nationalist groups to clearly understand how the new vigilante censorship machinery acts under a comprehensive ideological project. Also, the cases chosen are only the so-called "Bollywood" films. Bollywood as a global culture industry, producing and exporting standardised Hindi-speaking films, arose after foreign capital was allowed to invest in film production as a result of the liberalisation in the 1990s. Hindi film production became a business with investments and consumers on par with Hollywood and the cultural impact of Bollywood was far-reaching. So, targeting a Bollywood film with big capital investments based on communal sentiments generates publicity and widespread debates. Also, the Hindi medium of address and premise in these films make it a suitable target since Hindu nationalism argues to build a national identity based on Hindi language. So, this study attempts to find traces of a new censorship mechanism in the regulatory controversies that happened against Bollywood films from 1998-2018 and attempts to place such controversies in the broader picture of India after liberalisation in the 1990s.
Covering such a vast terrain of fields and arguments is not possible in a study like this, but the framework, trying to be developed here, is necessary to offer broad questions about censorship, communal regulatory outrages, Indian capitalism, the rise of far-right politics and the overwhelming impact cinerna has. The study tries to build a big reminder that what happens now is not an inevitable cultural turn in the history of social regulation, but more like the consequences of far-reaching changes in Indian capitalist society.
Guide: Athanickal, Hariprasad
University: The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad
Shodh Ganga Link: View Thesis
Category: Film Studies
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