Abstract
With the departure of British from India in August 1947, Indian filmmakers hoped to see a liberal censorship regime in the country that would accommodate their creative aspirations. This turned out to be a misplaced expectation, as the nascent Indian state embarked on its own censorship project avowing to safeguard its citizenry from the evil influence of ‘immoral cinema’. As a result, censorship of films was stepped up with ‘colonial anxieties’ of the British being replaced by ‘moral anxieties’ of Indian elite in deciding what goes on the screen.
This essay explores the position taken by filmgoer-citizens on the issue of censorship during this period by surveying the ‘letters to editor’ column of filmindia magazine, the most popular film journal of the time, for a period of three years immediately after independence. The letters show that the English speaking elite of the nascent state were enthusiastic votaries of censorship and wanted the state to exercise more – not less – control over the silver screens to ensure that ‘uneducated’, ‘rustic’ masses of the country are safeguarded from the “moral degradation”. Under the missionary leadership of editor Baburao Patel, the ‘letters to editor’ column of filmindia became a faux control room to which ‘morality guards’ from across the country could write to raise alarm about violations committed by ‘money minded film producers’ and demand action from the “government of the people”.
A research paper by ATIKH RASHID
IN 1954 as many as 13,000 homemakers sent a signed petition to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru asking him to take steps to control the evil influence of cinema on youngsters, claiming that “immoral and vulgar films” threatened “the moral health of the country” and that they were ‘a major factor in incitement to crime and general unsettlement of society’. (B D Garga,1996 ). In November that year, the issue was also raised in the Indian Parliament by Lilavati Munshi, a Rajya Sabha MP, saying that the cinema’s celebration of crime and lust was encouraging young Indians to copy these traits in real life and demanding that the government take steps to curb immorality in cinema. The issue was discussed in the upper house of the Indian parliament under the heading of ‘Steps to Ban Undesirable Films’ and makes for interesting reading. (Rajya Sabha debate, November 1954).
Munshi, known for her ultra-conservative stance, moved the resolution in the house in the presence of then Information and Broadcasting Minister B V Keskar, veteran filmmaker Prithviraj Kapoor who served as a nominated MP between 1952 and 1960, eminent poet Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ among others, stating that cinema was the “root of many crimes, especially juvenile crimes and the unruliness of the younger generation”. Calling cinema a “powerful weapon”, she said that “good or bad…it has come here to stay” adding that it has the potential to “make or mar a whole generation of the entire nation”. She cited several examples of the ‘ill effects of cinema’, almost all of which she had seen around her or had heard from others. One of those was about a young boy she knew…