The Hindu : To cut or not to cut

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 28, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

To cut or not to cut

Slef-censorship, says same. Leave it to the audience, say others Marcus Dam on the buzz in Kolkata.

CAN GOVERNMENTS be left to draw that fine, often blurred, line between what constitutes artistic freedom? "No", says veteran film-maker, Mrinal Sen, emphatically. "No government can be the judge. It is a fallacy to presume that governments are made up of people without their prejudices. Democracy has its limits; if astronomical principles have to be decided democratically, we might still be believing that the sun revolves round the earth," he says.

But, observes H.A. Halim, Speaker of the West Bengal Assembly, "there is always need for the government to act as arbiter. No government can avoid its responsibility to the people, inclusive of what is moral. In a democratic arrangement the view of the majority has to be respected, even in matters of the arts, although the government should give a lead in moulding public opinion."

The Bengali novelist, Sunil Gangopadhaya, for one, begs to differ. Whatever the political persuasion, "whether extreme Right or extreme Left, governments have a penchant for interfering in a domain they would do best [to] stay away from." But then, whose standards should determine what is decent and what is not? "No one can; the audience has the freedom to choose the bad from the good. In art, there is nothing that is vulgar till experienced."

The word "vulgar" does not go down well with the chairperson of the West Bengal Women's Commission, Yoshodhara Bagchi. "The term has class connotations," she says. As for "creative freedom", receding fast in these times of a cable television explosion is that space for the artist's freedom, which is "subject to enormous market variables", and defined increasingly "by ratings, market surveys and the propensity for instant saleability". The market, just like the fundamentalists, ends up "homogenising, a threat to human dignity, to women's worth."

Government interference? "No blank cheques to anyone," argues Ms. Bagchi who believes that "censorship is a mechanism often used mindlessly when it is imperative that this difficult, delicate grey area be constantly and carefully negotiated." She recalls Oscar Wilde's observation of "Life imitating Art". "Freedom has to be judged in the light of forces of work. Today we find ourselves in a very confused state of affairs, what with economic liberalisation, structural re-adjustments." Drawing a line between creative freedom and its abuse should not need any form of arbitration. It should be delineated "through conscious building; but if a dangerous trend appears that is likely to disrupt [this building process] then steps need to be taken."

"We speak of Westernised ways of exposing the woman's body. But images also given legitimacy are the extremely traditional view of bodies with jewellery" which she considers is another face of that threat posed by market ideology.

"The channel war to be one up on the other is hotting up and for an easy, immediate and guaranteed response there is this succumbing by certain channels — both Hindi and Bengali — to what titillates," says Ashok Surana, Managing Director, Channel Eight, a channel partner of Akash Bangla. "There is moral turpitude in not just scenes where the body is bared and the flesh exposed but in the popular soap story where the hero may be having affairs with more than five women."

"But in a scenario where more than 200 hours of software is being made daily in about 50 channels throughout the country any external censorship, whether from government or elsewhere, is not going to work," Mr. Surana points out. "The code to be adopted by producers and cable operators cannot be determined through the legislature. At the risk of sounding idealistic, what is imperative is some sort of self-censorship and recognition of the broadcaster's moral responsibility. The question I ask producers is can the serial in question be viewed by an entire family without causing anyone embarrassment?"

Having served as West Bengal Government's Principal Secretary, Information and Cultural Affairs, from 1994 to 1997, Sujit Sankar Chattopadhyay is aware of "the need, at times, for a government to play the role of a moral policeman and a certain amount of censorship keeping in mind that a holier-than-thou attitude is silly''. Not to be glossed over "is a government's potential to improve public taste by producing films or documentaries that will serve as a bench-mark to better taste." Also imperative is recognising, at times, the need for objectionable material to be left alone without much fuss "and let things pass.... for often, till as long as things are not prohibited, they stay unattractive."

Yet there is the question of "hypocritical standards" politicians are often accused of.

"There are those who cry themselves hoarse against showing scantily-clad women in certain music and fashion channels yet do not object to similar exposures in a Hindi film where suggestiveness can often be more vulgar," says Mr. Chattopadhyay.

Arguably, Kolkata's biggest cable network, the RPG, swears by the Cable TV Act, 1995 even though its CEO, Amit Nag, believes "that all things should coexist for different appetites." "Let the consumer decide on which standard to follow. But only after having recognised that in a country not quite ready to accept liberalism and with a product and people mix ratio like ours some degree of moral policing by the government might be required," he says.

But, Mr. Sen warns, "there are no social standards on matters of vulgarity and decency" in the arts. "It is left to one to resist the tyranny of the collective mediocrity," he says, borrowing a line from the 19th century philosopher, John Stuart Mill. An observation from closer home is that of Mr. Gangopadhaya: "It is all so subjective. Open up the choices to the audience by offering them greater alternatives." "Self-censorship is better than any external censorship,'' is what Ms. Bagchi underlines. Something which "should be taken up in earnest by television producers themselves,'' adds Mr. Surana. The cable television explosion, despite its pitfalls, is a pathway "to greater public awareness and information," according to Mr. Chattopadhyay even as Mr. Halim emphasises that any legislation framed by the Government calling for formal censorship "is got to be responsive to the majority's sensibilities."

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