As Justice Hidayatullah remarked in the landmark case of K. A. Abbas vs. Union of India -
“If the depraved begins to see in these things more than
what an average person would, in much the same way, as it is wrongly said, a Frenchman sees a woman’s leg in everything, it
cannot be helped.”[30]
There is also an appellate tribunal constituted under the Act, called the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) which can be approached if one is dissatisfied.[31]
III. Political Disregard for the Censor board
It has been seen on more than one occasion that films, despite getting clearance from the Central Board of
Film Certification,
are
banned in certain states by the
ruling governments
on flimsy
pretexts, only
to gain political mileage.
This comes as a severe blow to the
right to freedom of speech and expression.
In the early years of the history of independent India, this was not the case.
“In 1960, Satyajit Ray's Devi that questioned the surreal idealisation of women
in an ultra-conservative Hindu family raised a mild storm. There were demands
that the film be denounced for its anti-Hindu stance and that it not be
exhibited abroad. Ray scholar Dilip Basu, in his chronicling of the film,
recounts that the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
insisted that those who asked for a ban first watch the film. Predictably, the
furore died down.”[32]
The silver lining in the grey cloud has been that the judiciary has effectively acted as the guardian of the Constitution and upheld the right to freedom of speech and expression in all these cases.
Let us, therefore, examine the circumstances faced in the release of each of the respective films. However, before doing the same, a landmark case which was cited in cases dealing with both these films, S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram[33], may be discussed.
A. S. Rangarajan vs. P. Jagjivan Ram
i) Facts of the Case