Hiding the scissors: On the Central Board of Film Certification

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) wields significant cultural influence by deciding which films can be screened in Indian cinemas. Its decisions on what to excise from Indian films are followed nearly completely even by streaming services, despite not being required to show the censor’s version of a filmmaker’s artistic vision. The patterns that producers interpret from the CBFC’s decisions determine which stories are even made. There is a reason why few political films that espouse the cause of secularism (or the ills of communalism) are seen in cinemas today. There is also a reason why few would dare to make a film such as Satluj, considering what it went through at the censors’ hands, and the fate it was met with when an online release was briefly achieved. The censor board stands captured, blocking off films that are inconvenient to the ruling dispensation in ways that have never been seen before, and purging politics hostile to the dominant philosophy from films. All this to say, what the CBFC does matters, and the only check on its authority is the Cinematograph Act, 1952 and the rules framed thereunder, but its autonomy is only on paper.