Shyam Benegal with Senior Editor Alaka Sahani at The Indian Express office in Mumbai. (Source: Dilip Kagda) Shyam Benegal with Senior Editor Alaka Sahani at The Indian Express office in Mumbai. (Source: Dilip Kagda)

Alaka Sahani: You are heading a Central committee that is looking at a possible revamp of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). How do you see the task?

The first step which has been taken is to get the stakeholders to give us a feedback on film censorship, what they think is wrong with it and also what they see as solutions. The stakeholders in the film business include distributors, producers and exhibitors. The audience and various NGOs dealing with the Indian society also constitute stakeholders. As far as public opinion is concerned, there is already a website which the NFDC (National Film Development Corporation of India) has set up, where relevant information has been given about the guidelines of the film certification Board. We will also be looking at reports by two committees — Justice Khosla’s 1969 report (the Enquiry Committee on Film Censorship) and Justice Mukul Mudgal’s report in 2013 (on governing Indian cinema).

Feedback from the film industry is trickling in. People from other institutions, including those from the CBFC itself, have started writing in. We are waiting for a substantial amount of feedback to come in. We expect to put it all together and create a report that we hope will not only be valuable and useful to the film industry, but also satisfies people who are on the receiving end of films.

Shaji Vikraman: You head this committee, but how does this square with the fact that you have often said that you don’t believe in censorship yourself?

I don’t believe in censoring films or censoring anybody’s work. There is a relationship. There is a limit. What is the limit? There are two limits that are automatically there in any society. One limit is your Constitution itself. If you go beyond the parameters of the Constitution, it can be cut out, quite easily.

The second one is the society itself. The society in which we live. India is a very diverse country, we all know that. There are several kinds of norms and communities. But overall, there is a kind of norm, unstated although it might be, there is a general social norm, by which we conduct our everyday life. We have to keep that in mind.

You might have revolutionary thoughts or disagree with it. That is another matter. But when you are making a film, there are two aspects to it, unlike when you write. Somebody reads what is written — it is again an individual activity — but when it comes to film or theatre, you are doing it for a group of people. Therefore there are two different ways of receiving it. And while receiving it with a whole community of people, the way you receive it is slightly different. So when you deal with that sort of thing, you have to think in terms of the community to which you belong. What are the general belief patterns of these people in the broadest possible sense. When you step out of line from there, then obviously it has to be looked at.

Shubhangi Khapre: The ideological shift, say, is right-wing. Doesn’t it in some latent way influence your films?

For a filmmaker, it depends entirely on his own position. Because you see a filmmaker has a whole range of ideological beliefs. You can be right wing or left wing, wherever you want. It’s up to you. It is your own position. It’s your view of your own society. Your film will reflect that anyway, whether you like it or not.

Shubhangi Khapre: Do you also observe the change, that the way politics has changed, so has filmmaking?

Of course, it does. The primary objective of mainstream films is commercial one. You make a film, you spend a lot of money on it and you want to make a profit. This is very simple. There is no film that will not have a view of the society in which it is made. You might have films that may be extremely commercial, with commercial ingredients in them, but it doesn’t mean that they are going to lack any kind of social views. Whether it is consciously there or not… that depends on the person making the film and the person’s awareness of the world around him or her.

Dipti Nagpaul D’souza: Social norms are very subjective. Say, there is something that a certain community sees as an insult and then protests about it become a question of social norms. How do you intend to look at these norms?

It is very difficult. We must not forget that there are certain values that are unchangeable and certain values that keep on changing. Fifty years ago, the relationship between men and women was different from what it is today. What you say about subjectivity, that is something that will crop in whether you like it or not. The idea is to arrive to a point where different views cancel each other out. If they can, that will be ideal. That is one of the reasons why you need some sense of norms. If you lived in a homogeneous society, you would not require it. In India, we are not only living with diversity which is horizontal but also vertical.

Sonup Sahadevan: Is the committee powerful enough to clip the wings of Pahlaj Nihalani, the present head of the CBFC?

It is not as if an individual is running the show. I don’t think that individuals can even claim or be accepted in that sense.

Sonup Sahadevan: So you think Nihalani is not a problem for filmmakers?

If he is doing something and not following the guidelines, the State has every right to say that to him. I do not wish to comment on this aspect. To me, it is not an important issue.

Shubhangi Khapre: Knowing your high credentials, do you think that your taking charge of the CBFC revamp committee gives credibility to the Narendra Modi government?

Whether you like it or not, an elected government has credibility. We have a stable government which has been put into power by the people of the country. Every government will have a view on how things need to be done. We fortunately happen to be a democracy. So we can say that we won’t accept it.

Shaji Vikraman: Talking about the suicide of Rohith Vemula and treatment of students in Hyderabad and the way the FTII issue was handled by the government… Was it all unfair?

As far as the FTII is concerned, after about 140 days of students’ strike, I was specifically asked what the government should do. My suggestion was that chairman-designate Gajendra Chauhan should go and have a proper meeting with the students and allow them to ask whatever questions they want to ask of him. There was a section of students who had gone on strike, who said he did not have the credentials. Now, my point is, you may not have credentials but the important thing is to find out if the person has capability. I asked Chauhan to go alone and he said ‘yes’. Later on, I discovered that there were policemen.

Dipti Nagpaul D’souza: Even when a filmmaker wants an adult certification, they are asked to reduce the number of kissing scenes or slang words used. What’s your view?

There is a lot of subjectivity. Somebody says, ‘This kiss lasts for 30 seconds. Why don’t we cut it down to 5 seconds?’… That does happen. It has happened. I’ve heard this from a board member, who said, ‘Oh that scene is too long. They should have cut it down.’ I can’t even think about how absurd it is, but the fact is that it is very absurd to look at films from that point of view. But then you mustn’t forget that because it has become a kind of hide-and-seek game between the censors and filmmakers, sometimes the filmmakers do it also. For example, the particular (kissing) scene, they’ll extend it. ‘Sir, censor katega na. Kitna katega (How much will the Censor Board cut out)?’

Shobhana Subramanian: After the Dadri incident, about a dozen or so writers returned their awards. We didn’t see too many filmmakers return their awards.

My point of view is that if an award has been given to you by ‘A’ government — I’m making a difference between government and nation, governments come and they go, they are voted in and voted out — now that government gives you an award. Returning that award is fine because you are making a point. But a national award is an award of the nation regardless of which government is in power. Returning that is a comment on the nation. It’s not a comment on the government.

Filmmakers have spoken against it, but they haven’t made these grand gestures. By and large most people in their right minds would say how terrible it is. But the fact is, whether returning the award is going to make the same kind of sense as the other matter. When they started returning national awards, to me it didn’t make any sense to do that. They should find other ways of protesting.

Shaji Vikraman: Coming back to FTII and what happened in Hyderabad, do you think in both incidents the students were being treated as political opposition by the government?

It may be a coincidence. According to me, I don’t think there is a movement in that direction. As far as this boy (Rohith Vemula) from Hyderabad University is concerned, we know that caste does play a part in our lives. In India, if you happen to be a caste Hindu, you really don’t know what is happening to a person who comes from an untouchable community. How they are looked at and how their world actually is. Dalit existence in India is something that nobody really cares about. It’s as if Dalit experience is related only to them. And they happen to be at the bottom of the pile. I can understand the problems Rohith went through. The vice-chancellor there apparently is an OBC. It is well-known that the greatest problems would be between OBC and Dalit, rather than anybody else because they deal with each other much more closely than other communities.

Tabassum Barnagarwala: Kamal Swaroop’s Dance for Democracy ran into trouble with the Censor Board. Do you think such films should be safeguarded?

It’s funny, but in India, documentary films have not been taken seriously by the CBFC. There have been films which are very hard-hitting and socially aggressive. But they have not had the same kind of trouble. As far I know, only Anand Patwardhan and Rakesh Sharma have had trouble.

Alaka Sahani: How much trouble have you had with the Censor Board for your movies?

I had maximum trouble with Nishant (1975) which got banned and unbanned within a span of a few hours. When the film was made, unfortunately, Emergency was imposed at that time. The film was based on certain key incidents that led to a conflagration at the start of the Telangana movement. When I made that film, it never struck me that the situation of Emergency would be seen in that fashion by the establishment. When it went for censoring, it walked into a storm. It was very difficult to get a certificate. Eventually, I had to speak with Mrs Indira Gandhi. She watched the film and asked the officials, ‘What is in this film that worries you? It is a perfectly good film’. The film later travelled to international film festivals.

Shobhana Subramanian: Who among the current crop of young filmmakers do you find promising?

I like the works of Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap very much. Imtiaz Ali makes fairly sensitive films. A whole bunch of filmmakers is making more interesting films than people of my age at that time. There are filmmakers making good movies in other languages. But I don’t get the opportunity to watch too many of those.

Shobhana Subramanian: Why are there such few women filmmakers or technicians in the industry? There’s Aparna Sen, who stood out, but there has been no one of her calibre since. Also, Renu Saluja was a brilliant editor. Are there any obstacles?

I’d like to ask, whose fault is that? I understand women don’t see a career in filmmaking or these fields as a good option. Even in FTII, their number is not the same as men, or anywhere close, except, maybe, in a select few courses, such as editing.

Shubhra Tandon: Today, a lot of content is being consumed online and it is free. In such times, what is the relevance of a body such as the CBFC?

This question worries me too. But I cannot find real answers to this. I believe there is a difference between the way one receives communication as a community and the way one receives it as an individual.

Shaji Vikraman: Coming back to Nishant, it was triggered by the Telangana movement back then. And now, the Telangana state has been formed. Your thoughts on it?

The formation of Telangana was inevitable. Keeping in mind the manner in which we have created the country’s administrative units, the culture of Telangana is different from that of Andhra Pradesh. This was visible earlier too. The way the split happened back then, when part of Telangana went to Karnataka, part of Vidarbha was joined with Madhya Pradesh and so on, the cultural fault lines are visible even today. This also has to do with speech. For instance, the way people speak in Marathwada is distinct from the speech of Western Maharashtra.

Alaka Sahani: You had planned a film on the Telangana movement with Smita Patil.

It was to be based on a leader during the movement of 1948-51. I don’t remember her name at the moment, but she was a powerful Communist leader of the time. After Nehru’s amnesty plan, they were all allowed to come out and she was voted into the Assembly. But she wasn’t suited to that kind of politics. She was like a fish out of water. She felt so depressed that she became an alcoholic.

(Transcribed by ENS, Mumbai)

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