Banning Comedy Central is no laughing matter
When, on November 24, a division bench of the Delhi High Court held that banning Comedy Central for ten days was a just and proportionate punishment because it heeded the "collective cry of society", even those who are usually in favour of a supposedly benign, solicitous censorship regime gasped. Because, it was simply unfathomable to them that the regime of content moderation of what Indians get to see on cable television, which they had envisioned, would morph into one in which courts, driven by dizzying levels of paranoia, would rule as if society was facing a grave threat.
Rewinding to 1958 might be beneficial to understanding how the laws regulating the content on cable television - the Cable Television Networks Act, 1995 and its rules, especially Rule 6 which contains the Programme Code, came to assume the form they have taken at present. An indignant Lilavati Munshi, then heading the Society for the Prevention of Unhealthy trends in Motion Pictures, dashed off a letter to Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the United States, in which she complained that some Hollywood films were ruining the "moral fibre of our younger generations". It would be "one of the monumental acts" of the Eisenhower government, Munshi contended, if Mrs Eisenhower could "stop the production of such Hollywood films." It is worth noting that not a single particular film found place in this tirade against "Western culture".
As the high court emphasises in its ruling, the Cable Television Networks Act was driven by this very same mentality - the fear of "cultural invasion" from across Western shores, which could potentially corrode our society's hallowed morality. No wonder, the law has a vast swathe, in which anything and everything might land a channel in the censors' crosshairs.
The Programme Code enumerates 15 grounds of restrictions, and some of the categories are really eclectic. Suggestive innuendos, criticising any group or "moral life of the country", reflecting ironical or snobbish attitude towards an individual or group- should such terms which belie any concrete definition, be having any place in a statute? They would, and indeed do, open the floodgates of censorship, creating what is known as "the constituency of the offended", members of which derive glee from having a key fundamental right- that of freedom of speech and expression, curtailed without much ado.
The way such things in India go, when the laws themselves pave the path for censors' revelry, moral policing, aided by the law, is obviously the next step. And so was the case with Pratibha Naithani, who heads the department of Political Science in Mumbai's Saint Xavier's College. She moved the Bombay High Court, claiming that the laws and rules as they stood were insufficient to keep out "adult content" from television screens, and this was seriously jeopardising the mental health and morals of children and youth, especially because everyone in a household had near-unfettered access to the idiot box.
In essence, she wanted films which the Censor Board cleared for public exhibition and viewing, but with an "A" (adult) rating, to be taken off the television screens, even if satellite channels were broadcasting them only after 11 PM, on August 22 2005, the court ruled in her favour, and on December 21 the same year, also included television serials within the ambit. Thus, a two-tier censorship structure was created- the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for the silver screen, and the body enforcing the rules for cable television, with the latter having far wider powers.
But, Naithani wasn't done. A year later, she was back in the High Court, assailing the police's wink-and-nudge approach to the purveyors of "moral pollution". This time, she trained her guns on cable television operators, and demanded strict enforcement of Section 11 of the Act, which authorised the police to seize equipment of anyone violating Rule 6. The court again ruled in her favour, threatening the police commissioner with contempt if his men did not confiscate the decoders of any cable operator beaming channels whose content fell foul of the provisions of the stringent Programme Code. So, two more tiers of censors were created- private operators who were supposed to "self-regulate", and the men in khaki.
The Act vested in the commissioner of police the power to determine if any channel was breaching the Programme Code, but on March 1 2011, in the case of USA Cable Networks v State of Maharashtra, the court included even an ACP (Assistant Commissioner of Police) within the meaning of "authorised officer" under Section 11, thus casting the net of censorship even further.
Viacom 18, which owns Comedy Central, had not challenged the draconian provisions of the law before the Delhi High Court, and had only pleaded for a lesser penalty than being banned for ten days.
But it made suitable amends in its appeal to the Supreme Court. On November 28, the apex court agreed to hear the challenge to the provisions of the law which have birthed a censorship regime in flagrant violation of fundamental rights and constitutional provisions. It also stayed the operation of the Delhi High Court's penalty. The previous ruling dispensation has been prevaricating all along, and in the process, only gone on strengthening the cable television censorship fortress. The present government, which has been proclaiming "maximum governance" as its motto, has its day in court on December.8. It should not throw away this opportunity to dismantle this citadel of arbitrariness in its entirety.