The recent news of Censor Board’s move to mute the word lesbian from the movie ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’ is another baffling move of the many different issues of censorship with respect to our Hindi films.

I don’t want to argue if ‘lesbian’ is a cuss word or not. I just want to remind Pahlaj Nihalani – the current Censor Board chief about the movies he had produced during his time.

Yes this man was a film producer and some of the scenes and shots are truly offensive.

In ‘Haathkadi’ Reena Roy abuses saying ‘bevde’ (abusive slang for drunkard)

Rakesh Roshan is shown to be a bad guy. He sexually harasses women.  In one scene he very casually even rapes and murders a girl.

The below scene from the movie ‘Ilzaam’ has words and shots that as per the way censorship is heading these days, this entire scene would have become a cuss scene.

Prem Chopra starts with the dialogue, “Laga lo”. Of course he explains then “gale laga lo.”

The use of the word ‘hawas’ is allowed, cigarette is openly smoked and the torture scene when he is poking the knife near Govinda’s eye is quite violent.

There is a serious attempt to rape scene also in this film. Shatrughan Sinha comes at the right time and saves the girl. Now comes the most offensive part.

Shatrughan Sinha justifies that he would have taken him to jail but he is relieving him only because he hailed from a good family background and his father was a respectable man. After hearing this amazing justification I went ‘khamosh’.

Seriously amazing logic!!!

That kind of portrayal of law and irrelevant justification to such serious criminal acts is what is truly offensive.

Here the Censor Board has a problem with the word lesbian?!!

Now this is apparently a comedy scene but listen to the dialogue at 1:11: (Movie – Shola Aur Shabnam)

Meri ladkiyaan itni bhi buri nahi hain ki pehele hi baar mein gaalon mein pappi de de (My girls are not so bad that they would kiss the guys in the first meeting itself)

Therefore the character of a girl is directly proportional to the time she takes to get physical. This stereotype projection and hinting the rules that women need to adhere to has resulted in a deeply rooted regressive mentality. If a woman kisses in the first meet then she is immediately termed as characterless and if she is having sex then she has to be a sl*t.

We are debating here if lesbian is a cuss word or not.

When you Mr. Pahlaj Nihalani produced such films there was no fuss but today lesbian became a cuss!

The post Lesbian Is A Cuss? Look At The Films Censor Board Chief Had Produced appeared first on Youngisthan.in.

It is no secret that the Indian censor board has been interjecting with Bollywood’s creativity a bit too much. Nothing much has changed this time around either.

Recently, the censor board chief released a statement containing a list of words that are to be not used by Indian filmmakers in their movies.

This list contains two columns, where the first one contains words in English, the second section depicts Hindi words that they have banned.

In the latter section, words such as “maarna”, “lena”, “dena”, “bajana” and “phadna”, to name a few, which are often used as violent or sexual innuendos, are banned, too.

The Central Board of Film Certification chairman Pahlaj Nihalani, as per reports, has sent this particular list to the Producers’ Association and Regional Officers.

Pahlaj Nihalani, Censor Board chief

“Haramzada” is another word that has been banned by CBFC. Remember the good ol’ days when we watched Dharmendra’s movies that contained this particular cuss word? Yes, reminisce those days and come back to the modern day while bidding adieu to the time when dialogues containing “cuss” words made sense.

Twitteratis expressed their concerns condemning this move exercised by CBFC. One Twitter user made a valid point suggesting all movies should then be unanimously released with ‘U’ certification, as ‘A’ certification would not make sense anymore.

It has only been close to a month since Pahlaj Nihalani took up the role as the Censor Board chief. His list contains 36 cuss words that are to be banned from Bollywood films.

The list of banned words circulated by CBFC

The passing of this circular has caused internal rift within the CBFC with Ashoke Pandit leading the way claiming this order to be “murder” of creativity. He also claimed in his tweet that he was not consulted about the objectionable words.

Other than profane words, even the word ‘Bombay’ is to be excluded from movies. This is with reference to the Government of Maharashtra notification sent out in year 1996 where Mumbai is to be used instead of Bombay.

The order sent out by Mr. Nihalani reads as follows, “It has been noticed that some of the objectionable words/abusive words are still to be deleted from the film”.

So, what next can we expect…ban on item numbers, lack of gore scenes (which, by the way, Bollywood does not use as much as Hollywood)!! The clock’s ticking, time’s moving on and the new generation is walking in.

Though the conventional audience can deal with sobriety, the newer audience demands scenes pumped with adrenaline, a hundred cuss words and people getting killed in movies, even if the deaths make no sense.

Banning is not an option. Let’s hope the CBFC understands the audience’s demands and comes to terms with what they want to allow or ban.

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