3 films censor board feels are too hot for India to handle
Respect existence or expect resistance. The new guerrilla movement has started. This time, it's without stones and slogans. Amidst multiple controversies, in a closed room, the curtains are raised and the wall lights up. With films the censor board doesn't want you to watch playing uncensored. On February 11, The Opposition, an association formed by a group of individuals to create resistance in society, organised the “Free Speech Film Festival” to emphasise freedom of expression in filmmaking. Unfreedom, Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai and Jashn-e-Azadi were the three films which were screened within a closed room at Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi. These films have been, so far, screened at more than 100 locations including universities and private houses without a censor board certificate.
Jashn-e-Azadi
It’s August 15, and the Indian flag ritually goes up at Lal Chowk in the heart of Srinagar, Kashmir. The normally bustling square is eerily empty – a handful of soldiers on parade, some more guarding them, and except for the attendant media crews, no Kashmiris. The national anthem plays and its echo reaches Kashmiris confined to their house walls, contradicting what we call freedom.
Jashn-e-Azadi begins to explore the many meanings of freedom – of Azadi – in Kashmir. Directed by Sanjay Kak in 2007, the film stirred controversy during its screenings. In 2012, the screening at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce in Pune was stopped by right wing fundamentalists. I think, it's the K word that creates ripples in Indian politics from time to time.
Kak's documentary is not just a rear glance of life under military control but also a pedagogical shed of the many lives revolving around the men in uniform. A desolate father looks for his son's grave in a Shaheedi Qabristan (Martyrs' graveyard); a teen describes the body of a young man in the neighbourhood killed during an army operation: "The body is lying in the crossroad amidst the houses, no one is allowed to approach, even the dog did not go near it."
Unfreedom
Released in 2015, Raj Amit Kumar’s “Unfreedom” shocks you with a pandemonium of religious violence and rampant homophobia. The film is shot in two cities with two protagonists, first a young Muslim zealot (Bhanu Uday), who arrives in New York from Pakistan to kill a liberal Muslim scholar (Victor Banarjee) and second, a Hindu lesbian (Preeti Gupta), who defies her father's decision of getting her married to a boy of his choice. Instead, she chooses to marry an international female artist, who is famous for her nude art. The film runs parallel to the two characters, with flashbacks and thriller sound effects thrown in. Unfreedom, a film focusing on religious bigotry and homosexuality, also stirred controversies across India and failed to get a censor board certificate.
Reason: Too much nudity. Or let's say just two girls sleeping on the same bed naked.
Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai
Nakul Singh Sawhney’s Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai follows in the footsteps of Kya Hua Is Sheher Ko? (by Deepa Dhanraj), In the Name of the Father (by Anand Patwardhan) and Final Solution (by Rakesh Sharma). It digs into the aftermath of the communal riots that broke out in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in Uttar Pradesh in August and September 2013.
"The moment Narendra Modi entered UP, the state got drenched in communal water," a Muslim victim whose families were killed during the riot speaks into the camera. "Mujhe dar nahi lagta (I am not scared of anyone)", he further adds. Based on rising "Love Jihad" (a term coined by Hindu fringe outfits who claim Muslim boys woo Hindu girls and marry them to convert them into Muslims), Sawhney presents how the state turned into a battleground of communal and political clashes during 2013, just before BJP took over the Centre in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. This film also failed to get a censor certificate because the board thought "the film would not be good at a time when tensions among religious sects are on the rise".