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A housewife rolls in bed, mysteriously moaning all alone at night, unable to sleep. Her husband, an officer with the merchant navy, is always traveling for work. Her gawky young brother-in-law watches her every night from the bedroom door left open. In the morning, the housewife serves breakfast to her shy brother-in-law while they exchange uncomfortable glances. The same scenes get repeated for hours, only the moans keep getting louder.

Few people besides its makers would have heard of, let alone watched, the picture playing before me, “Mastani Bhabhi (roughly translated, Sister-in-law in Heat)”. It was my first day as an advisory member of the film censor board, entrusted with the delicate task of deeming “Mastani Bhabhi” as being okay or not okay for children to watch. Ideally, nobody should have been wasting their time with this B-grade movie, but that was another matter.

After the movie ended, members of the examining committee initiated a discussion, arguing for an “A” (for adults only) certificate for the film. I made a feeble case for a “U” (Universal) rating, given the movie had no sexual content. “I thought the sister-in-law had brain fever; she should’ve seen a doc,” I said, but no one else agreed. “They’ll slip in pornographic scenes when the film plays at small town theaters,” said Vinayak Azad, the censor board’s regional officer. “There’s nothing we can do about that. The board has no enforcement powers.” The film received an “A” certificate.

The group dispersed to meet another day. I left dreading the thought of sitting through another “Mastani Bhabhi” for three hours. Such was my oddly grueling job as a card-carrying cultural commissar of the state from 2007 through 2009, when I completed my stint.

On an average, India’s Central Board of Film Certification, commonly known as the Censor Board, previews around 13,500 films in a year, which include trailers, short films, documentaries and advertisements that play at cinemas. Around 1,200 to 1,300 of these films are full-length features. (India produces the most movies for theatrical release in the world.)

The board, based in Mumbai, operates from eight other cities representing the major linguistic centers: New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Cuttack.

Like all bureaucracies, the Censor Board is a multitiered setup. The chairperson, appointed by the government, is usually a known figure from arts and entertainment. (The current chairwoman, Leela Samson, is a noted danseuse.) An appointed chief executive looks after the board’s administration and the regional officers, and middlemen or agents liaise between the board and film producers.

“Even for the appointment of the C.E.O. or regional officers, the government prefers bureaucrats with an inclination or interest in films,” said Pankaja Thakur, who took over as the chief executive of the Censor Board one and half years ago. When she went to interview for the Censor Board’s top job, Ms. Thakur, who is also an officer with the Indian customs agency, brought along a short film she had directed.

She reviews only select films, but at least one of her officers is supposed to be present at all screenings. “This is only to help members with laws of the land,” she said, which make it a punishable offense to offend any person from a scheduled caste or tribe. “You can’t necessarily expect a Mumbai housewife to know that or be aware of laws that protect against denigration of national emblems of India,” she said.

About 500 citizens, 150 of them in Mumbai, are entrusted with the task of certifying films during their terms, the lengths of which can vary. In 2007, I was able to observe the Mumbai troops in one place, after the Censor Board had come under severe criticism from the National Commission for Scheduled Castes for allowing a song with the word “mochi” (cobbler in Hindi) in the film “Aaja Nachle,” starring Bollywood’s dancing queen, Madhuri Dixit. While the word “mochi” doesn’t refer to a particular caste, only a profession, a perturbed Sharmila Tagore, then the board’s chairwoman, had called a town hall meeting of Mumbai’s Censor Board members.

At the time, members were paid 800 rupees ($14 at current exchange rates) to attend each film screening. An identity card given by the Censor Board allowed them free access into any cinema in India, so they could check and report to the police if films were being played without the suggested cuts. Some of the members claimed that they had even got theaters shut down. Many spoke at length on the declining morality of Indian films.

Going through the attendance roster of those members now, I realized that a majority of them had listed “social service” as their profession. Board officials told me that it’s a euphemism for political activist. They are mostly appointed on recommendation of their local legislators or politicians. “Who’s to say a grassroot political worker doesn’t represent public opinion?” Ms Thakur said, though she admitted that some of the members “do exceed their brief, and many need to be sensitized through workshops so that cinema and art is allowed to push the envelope.”

Arguably the Censor Board film classifications have been more lenient toward violence than toward sexual content. I sensed this time and again, sitting on a panel discussing, for instance, how long must the leading man make out with a girl in a pivotal scene of Sudhir Mishra’s film “Khoya Khoya Chand”: “Eleven seconds is too much,” said a panelist. “Yes, it should be cut at least by half,” agreed another. “It’s here that the heroine finds her man with another girl, a shorter scene would curb the impact,” I butted in. The debate carried on for a while.

Indian audiences have still come a long way since the word “sexy” was banned from Hindi film songs and replaced with the word “baby” in the 1990s. A recent hit track, “Bhaag DK Bose,” from the movie “Delhi Belly” got passed without a hitch, even though the main stanza refers to a common Hindi expletive. “We didn’t know that when we heard the song first,” said Ms. Thakur, but she didn’t change the board’s decision after learning what the word meant.

However, the film itself being approved without cuts almost cost Ms. Thakur her job. “A letter from a senior bureaucrat in the prime minister’s office was sent to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, asking for my resignation, for letting go a scene insinuating oral sex in the film,” Ms. Thakur said. The board’s chairwoman, Ms. Samson, stood by Ms. Thakur, who was allowed to remain.

Barring this instance, the Censor Board rarely faces intervention from the government. Legal notices, court papers and letters of complaints on Ms.Thakur’s desk indicate interference of another kind. During her short tenure, she has also witnessed mass demonstrations outside her office by groups representing a tribal community, Christians and Tibetans.

Over the years, the focus of the Censor Board appears to have shifted from sex and violence to people’s “hurt sentiments” – some of it possibly real, but much of it imagined. During a preview of Ram Gopal Varma’s film “Sarkar Raj,” one of my co-panelists in the room suddenly noticed the word “ghati” in the film’s dialogue. “Ghati” is derogatory slang for someone who’s uncultured. There is no known community of “ghatis,” but he demanded that the word be deleted from the film, arguing that it would “hurt sentiments.” Everyone immediately agreed, as did Mr. Varma, though, oddly enough, he didn’t even know the word existed in his film.



By contrast, in the week that I interviewed Ms. Thakur, the Censor Board passed Anurag Kashyap’s violent “Gangs of Wasseypur” without cuts, yet violent scenes were the one of the reasons that Mr. Kashyap’s first film, “Paanch,” was blocked in 2001. Last year, the political documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan had his film, “Jai Bhim Comrade,” cleared without any objections, even though it is about the life of the politician B.R. Ambedkar, a sensitive subject in India.

Although it is Ms. Thakur’s job to screen out objectionable content, she said she found filmmakers’ eagerness to agree to changes distasteful. “The directors and producers are only too happy to accept cuts so long as their film gets a ‘U/A’ certificate instead of an ‘A,’’’ she said, referring to the “parental guidance” rating.



“Makers of the movie ‘Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji,’ an adult comedy, were okay with 25 cuts,” she said. “Sometimes you wonder what kind of art or creativity are we protecting here; it’s all about commerce. Many of these filmmakers use Censor Board rulings to garner press publicity for their movies, and they openly tell us so.”

I saw this firsthand when I sat through another B-grade film for the Censor Board. This time it was an excessively violent flick starring the character-actor Rajpal Yadav in the lead. Yawning panelists at the preview granted it an “A” certificate, without any cuts.

The film’s producer walked into the screening room. “No cuts at all?” he asked. “It’s so violent, you must give cuts,” he pleaded.

“But we don’t think it’s necessary,” said Mr. Azad, the board’s regional officer.

The producer didn’t give up. “Come on, how will people know this film exists? I’ve made a very violent film. How will I publicize it?” he said.