Documentary on Amartya Sen faces ban by Censor Board over words like cow, others
Now, the Censor Board has decided to ban a documentary on Amartya Sen over the use of words like cow and Gujarat, to name a few.
Kolkata, July 12: The scissor of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), also commonly known as the Censor Board, is growing sharper with each passing day.
Now, the board has stopped the screening of a documentary-- The Argumentative Indian--on Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, who has also written the seminal book of the same name.
The board told the maker of the film, economist Suman Ghosh, that the film could not be screened unless and until he beeps out words like "cow", "Gujarat", "Hindu India" and "Hindutva view of India" to name a few from it.
The film was shown to board members in Kolkata on Tuesday. The board gave the documentary a U/A certificate.
"The attitude of the censor board just underlines the relevance of the documentary in which Sen highlights the growing intolerance in India. Such scrutiny of any criticism of the government in a democratic country is shocking. There is no way I would agree to beep or mute or change anything that one of the greatest minds of our times has said in the documentary," Ghosh told The Telegraph.
In
the
documentary,
shot
in
two
parts
in
2002
and
2017,
the
word
"Gujarat"
comes
up
in
a
lecture
Sen
delivered
at
Cornell
University:
"...Why
democracy
works
so
well
is
that
the
government
is
not
free
to
have
its
own
stupidities,
and
in
case
of
Gujarat
its
own
criminalities,
without
the
Opposition
being
howled
down
and
booted
out...."
All
the
banned
words
were
spoken
by
Sen
during
his
various
talks
and
interviews
which
are
part
of
the
documentary.
Talking about the backlash to the airing of his views on the present state of the nation, Sen said: "Now a lot of people would disagree with my view of India.... Whenever I try to take this rather grand view of India, which is not the banal Hindutva view of India, whenever I make a statement, I know the next morning I will get 800 attacks on social media of four different kinds.... I can see there is an organised attack (by a particular political group).... Now the main thing is not to be deterred by it."
Recently, the Censor Board hit the headline after it removed the word "intercourse" from Shah Rukh Khan-starrer film, Jab Harry Met Sejal. Before that, films like Lipstick Under My Burkha faced the "ban" imposed by the board, delaying their releases.
OneIndia News