censorship.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive politically incorrect or "inconvenient" as determined by government authorities or by community consensus. - Wikipedia

India is a democratic nation and every citizen has freedom of expression, speech and chooses their way to live life. But these rights are somehow suppressed under the censorship issues. India is multicultural country and every citizen has different values, culture and people might get offended about some content that is shown in TV, books, movies, songs, newspapers, radio, internet and etc. But censorship took itself to another level in India, which is quite questionable.

Why we need censorship? Maybe we find every possible way to getting offensive. Censorship is to sustain the content not to cut the whole thing just because Indian government think that truth might hurt feelings of some group of people. Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime”

Censorship is highlighted when Pehlaj Nihalani stood against the filmmakers and censorship is converted into controversy. Nihlani deleted scenes without taking any care and for filmmakers getting CBFC certificate for any movie is not that easy.  Not only Mr Pehlaj Nihlani but FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan also got famous for censorship issues.

Censorship rules are questionable and ridiculous at many points. For example, you can’t say word ‘sex’ on the TV; sometimes they change it to gender. ‘Bitch’ becomes ‘Women’ isn’t that more offensive? Words are not enough so sometimes they cut whole chunks, according to Mashable the season 5 of ‘Game Of Thrones’ was edited to half its original length (45min to 22min). In 2015 Star World receive a letter from BCCC (Broadcasting Content complaints council) for broadcasting ‘homosexual’ content in Grey’s Anatomy and there for ‘denigrating’ women. And on the other hand child marriages are totally fine, and black magic is awesome and slapping a woman on TV shows are not makes any difference! Not single complaints are against these shows. And sometimes TV channels are so scared of government; sometimes they exercise self- censorship to an extreme level. Like they blurred out innerwear because men wear baniyan and apparently women wear pixels! There is no TV channel in India where you can watch content freely.

In movies, censorship again makes no sense. They beeped out word ‘Musalman’ in Sarfrosh, a movie about indo-pak relation! When musalman did become a bad word? Homosexuality is a big question as content. Movies, where LGBT community showcase as jokers and people are we can easily laugh about, are easily getting released and maybe that time censor board get unoffended. But movies carrying the real issues that faced by LGBT’s are on the radar of censor board. Why we need censorship? Is turning into, why we get offended? Movies like Aligarh, Pink mirror, Fire and etc get banned or with lots of cuts. Many movies get censored because of its sexual content especially Hollywood films for example 1) fifty shades of grey: because of sex scenes, 2) Blue Jasmine: a film that gave Cate Blanchett Oscar for best actress failed to release in Indian Theatre because of smoking disclaimer, 3) The Girl with the dragon tattoo: critically acclaimed movie never made its way in India because of disturbing scenes including rape sequence, 4) Dirty Grandpa:  adult- comedy makes no sense like Bollywood adult-comedy. Grandpa should have always been sanskari! And the list is like never-ending. Censor board may be not familiar with humour and nudity.

Many movies that raised issues of women like Water, Lipstick under my Burkha, try so hard to mark their presence when we need it. Documentary-Like India’s Daughter banned because we can easily see a rapist, they are more concerned about his identity than his terrible answer. The movie is an art and art is meant for entertainment but there is a difference between art and circus, circus only entertains and art has many more things to do. Movies are influenced by society and so that society influenced by movies. Movies are the mirror of society and somehow censorship is protecting us from reality.

Literature is also getting censored and many books are banned in India. This issue is come into in limelight by the controversy of Salman Rushdie's book the Satanic Verses that heated the situation. Many books are banned in India just because content carrying historical, cultural, political issues and this content led towards the controversies. There are many books are need to unban now. Pete Hautman author of Godless said, “Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous- they contain ideas.”   

Censorship is not only covering the entertainment world. But form the very past censorship includes the morally, politically, religiously. The word censorship is come from by Latin word censor, the job of two Romans to supervise people by their morals and behaviour. In the 21^st century, people are educated and smart enough to pick choices. Jay Z said, “We change people through conversation not through censorship” there are many ways to censored things in the right way or telecast content. Mediums like TV reach people’s living rooms India has 1.3 billion with different culture and values and you never know who might be offended by what. But there has to be a way of broadcasting the right content to the right people and some of the solutions already exist. Like using late night slot for adult content, or using the child lock feature that most DTH providers offer. Or best let’s start a separate uncensored channel and charge the premium for it. People who want to watch content won’t mind paying extra.

The question why we need censorship is remaining same. And we all know the answer.