CBFC and the Politics of Censorship in Modi's India

The Hindu

09-07-2025

Published : Jul 08, 2025 17:15 IST - 12 MINS READ
On June 30, the Kerala High Court rightly reminded the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of a basic fact—that its job is not to moralise. Not to police film titles or creators' choice of story. Or how they portray or narrate them. And certainly not to act like it is safeguarding 'culture' from the perils of cinema.
The producers of JSK: Janaki v/s State of Kerala applied for film certification on June 12, aiming for a theatrical release on June 27. Under Rule 23 of the Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 2024, the CBFC's Regional Officer is required to constitute an Examining Committee when such an application is made. The film cleared this hurdle and as happens generally, should have been issued a certificate.
However, Rule 25 empowers the Chairperson to overrule the Committee's recommendation and refer the film to a Revising Committee, which re-evaluates the film and decides by majority. Janaki found itself caught in this discretionary loop. The production house by then had already challenged the delay in certification before the Kerala High Court, stating it would lose up to Rs.80 lakh if the film is not released on time.
However, the Revising Committee insisted on changes that the producers refused to make. The objection? That the protagonist's name—Janaki—was inappropriate because she is a rape survivor and Janaki is also a name for the Hindu goddess Sita.
It was, by any measure, an absurd line of reasoning. A simple Google search would show that Janaki is among the 111 names by which Sita is known. Justice N. Nagaresh, who is hearing the case and decided to watch the movie himself before ruling on the case, rightly observed that the protagonist Janaki is not a rapist and is a woman fighting for justice in a court of law. 'Eighty per cent of names in this country have religious connotations, like, Ahammed, Anthony, Kesavan, Krishnan,' the single-judge bench stated.
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The CBFC's decision, the judge implied, was not grounded in law but in arbitrary sentiment. And sentiment, unlike statute, cannot be the basis for denying certification. The fact that the film's teaser with the same name was cleared three months ago, following the very same process, did not help the CBFC's case. What makes the entire episode even more strange and ironic is that the film stars the BJP's own Union Minister, Suresh Gopi. This goes on to show that when sentiment, not statute, governs decision-making, even political proximity offers no guarantee of protection.
The CBFC's absurdity is no outlier, and absurdity is the governing logic of censorship in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's India. Over the past decade, the CBFC has become less a certifying body and more an arm of state-sponsored and sentiment-driven censorship. With every decision, every inexplicable demand for cuts, and every instance of folded resistance in the face of fringe protests, the Board has revealed what it truly is: a morality police in disguise.
From the politically obedient chairmanship of Pahlaj Nihalani (2015-17) to the more polished but equally servile tenure of Prasoon Joshi (2017-present), the CBFC has functioned not as a neutral certifier but as an ideological vetting committee.
Sanctification of films
The CBFC derives its powers from the Cinematograph Act, 1952. Under Sections 4 and 5B, it can suggest modifications or refuse certification altogether if a film violates broad content guidelines, like, if it undermines the sovereignty or integrity of India, threatens public order or decency, or offends morality. In addition to this, the law allows the government to issue a set of guidelines to guide the certification process, and these guidelines are as broad as they can get.
These catch-all categories, never exhaustively defined, have served as blank cheques for cultural control. In practice, they allow the Board to dictate what language is permissible, what costumes are appropriate, and what ideologies are tolerable. This allows the CBFC to regulate not just content, but tone, style, subtext, and politics. And over time, the line between certification and censorship has blurred, and under the current political regime, it seems to have been erased.
In the 2016 case of Udta Punjab, the Nihalani-led CBFC suggested a mammoth 94 cuts, including the removal of the word 'Punjab' itself and references to drug use—both of which were central to the theme of the film. Use of terms like 'MP', 'MLA', 'Parliament', slang for drugs, close-up shots of persons injecting drugs, etc., was also asked to be removed.
The Board even asked the film to add a disclaimer to show 'efforts made by the government to tackle drug problem'. Later, Nihalani would admit in an interview that he was asked to delay the film's release. Who, he would not say. But Punjab, then governed by the Shiromani Akali Dal and the BJP, was going into an election the next year.
The Bombay High Court was eventually called upon to intervene, clearing the film for release with just one cut and a revised disclaimer. In its judgment, the court reminded the CBFC that adult audiences cannot be treated like children. Echoing what the Kerala High Court would later orally reiterate in the Janaki case, the Bombay High Court observed that 'it is open for a creative person to choose the backdrop, setting and story line. No one can dictate how and what the content of the film should be.'
Despite these remarks, the CBFC has not changed. In fact, its regression has only furthered. Many films that have been subjected to the Board's regressive censor-powers but which were eventually released thanks to the courts, received critical acclaim for their portrayal of reality and truth—truth that the CBFC and its political masters much preferred buried.
Political alignment
Under Nihalani, censorship became performative. He introduced a list of banned cuss words—even for films certified for adult viewing. He objected to kissing scenes in a James Bond film and demanded that all content align with 'Indian culture', a term that, like morality, remains undefined. His decisions were often very bizarre. That continued after his removal, when the poet Prasoon Joshi took over and has ever since stuck to the chair.
Joshi brought polish and poetry, but not freedom. The culture of bureaucratic overreach persisted. The Board has continued to deny certification or suggest cuts based on the vague possibility that someone, somewhere, might take offense.
Consider the latest case of Phule, a biopic on social reformers Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule. The Board reportedly asked for nearly a dozen cuts, including replacing the phrase '3000 years of slavery' (a reference to casteism) with 'many years', deleting words like 'Mang' and 'Mahar', and modifying scenes that depicted caste-based labour. The actor-director Anurag Kashyap, one of the fiercest, vocal critics of the BJP government, called out the CBFC for its actions as the film exposed 'the agenda of this casteist, regionalist, racist, government'.
The film was finally cleared after producers agreed to the modifications, but only in a form that muted its central critique.
This year too, Santosh was denied certification since the CBFC was offended by the film's realistic and morally complex portrayal of police brutality, caste discrimination, Islamophobia, and misogyny. The internationally acclaimed film was the UK's official Oscar entry in the Best International Feature Film category, a missed opportunity for India.
Just as the CBFC once demanded a sycophantic disclaimer in Udta Punjab praising the State government's efforts to tackle drug abuse, another striking example came this year with Sitaare Zameen Par. Sent to a Revising Committee, the film was reportedly cleared only after the producers agreed to include a quote by Prime Minister Modi, along with other mandated cuts like removing the visual of a 'kamal' (lotus, the BJP's party symbol). Political appeasement is also a part of the certification process.
To add to this quiet hell, The Hindu's Aroon Deep reported that the CBFC has quietly altered its online portal that offered near-complete access to film certification records, including detailed cut lists demanded. Now, the public can view only the cut lists of films currently in theatres—the archive is gone. Ongoing censorship and the Board's arbitrariness is rendered invisible in real time. What little transparency once existed has been sealed shut.
Pre-2021, the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), headed by a retired judge, sometimes came to the rescue of artistic freedom. Like when the CBFC denied certification to the 2017 film Lipstick Under My Burkha, calling the film 'lady-oriented' (only Nihalani knows what that means) and too sexual, the FCAT overturned the decision, noting that the Board had misread its brief.
That tribunal no longer exists. Modi's government abolished the FCAT in 2021, in the garb of larger tribunal reform, citing 'administrative efficiency'. In reality, it eliminated the only appellate forum that could reasonably challenge CBFC decisions without going to court.
Filmmakers must now litigate in the High Courts. But litigation is a privilege. Small filmmakers cannot afford it. Festival circuit films often die waiting. In the FCAT's absence, even temporary relief can take months. The High Courts are also crunched for time, paralysed by over five million pending cases and a crippling shortfall of judges which is the government's own doing. The chilling effect deepens.
It is no accident that while meaningful films are blocked or butchered, propaganda routinely passes off as cinema and wins state-sponsored applause. The Kashmir Files and The Vaccine War are prime examples of films that play fast and loose with fact, yet receive open endorsement from the highest quarters, with the Prime Minister himself attending screenings.
Many of these spectacles are directed by Vivek Agnihotri, a CBFC board member, who has famously declared that 'facts are not facts' and that 'emotional truth' matters more. Naturally, this logic—where sentiment trumps factual scrutiny, as also seen in other walks of life in the past decade—has seeped deeper into the CBFC's functioning. In that sense, Agnihotri's 2017 appointment to the CBFC in Modi's India is a natural destiny unfolding.
Self-censorship, by design
This design is not accidental. A state that wants to control cinema does not always need to impose bans, like we saw in the case of the January 2023 BBC documentary on Modi's role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. It can achieve the same result by making the process unpredictable, arbitrary, and exhausting. Filmmakers now anticipate what the CBFC will not clear and write scripts accordingly.
Political critique is dulled. Which is why it came as a surprise when the 2023 film Jawan—a mass-market Shah Rukh Khan-starrer—featured a striking, over-a-minute-long monologue urging citizens to ask questions before casting their vote. The film portrayed themes of farmers' suicides and the public healthcare system, and gave Khan's character, Azad, a powerful piece-to-camera to insist on electoral accountability—a rarity in today's cinematic landscape.
In a political climate where even mild dissent is stifled, let alone from a global superstar, this was an unusually direct, veiled critique of the political establishment. This was even more significant since the general election was only months away.
But it will be foolish to think these are not exceptions. The CBFC today does not even need to wield its scissors—because what would have been cut is no longer written. Speak to any filmmaker worth their salt, and they will tell you about the vanishing tribe of talented screenwriters in Mumbai and elsewhere who once spent years crafting the perfect story that aspired to be masterpieces of art. Most of them have either retreated into writing for small production houses that function like a factory that churns out cringeworthy content and second-screen distractions, for meagre payments, or left the industry altogether.
The arrival of OTT platforms once promised a new frontier of an independent, daring, democratic space. But with the looming spectre of OTT regulation and sustained political pressure (judicial pressure too, as soon-to-be Chief Justice of India, Justice Surya Kant, is also batting for this sort of regulation), even these platforms now self-censor. The 'Ease of Doing Business' is less about deregulation and more about deference—how smoothly you bend to keep the political masters comfortable. Many now choose to crawl for safety over story.
Some OTT platforms' India heads are frequently spotted making rounds of the PMO and Ministries, like Information and Broadcasting, in Delhi. Anurag Kashyap has, on several occasions, called out platforms like Netflix India, who he described as a 'bunch of most dishonest and morally corrupt' persons and for its 'lack of empathy, courage, and vision'. Harsh as they are, Kashyap's remarks embody the collective frustration of today's artists.
In that sense, truly, under Prime Minister Modi, India has become a place where mediocrity flourishes by design, while talent is exiled to the margins—unseen, unread, and increasingly unwritten. The blocking of thought-provoking narratives like Santosh highlights the Indian state's paternalistic attitude towards its citizens: either they are deemed too naive to grasp the gravity of difficult truths, or such truths are considered too dangerous to awaken them to.
The dynamic is about pre-emptively suppressing the possibility of independent thought. The CBFC in Modi's India has functioned to meet that end by systematically and sustainably filtering out dissent, nuance, and depth in the name of morality or this government's go-to term— 'national interest'.
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This is not just the erosion of creative freedom. It is the systematic dulling of a population's political imagination. A society constantly numbed with safe stories and cheap spectacle loses the language to articulate injustice or even recognise it. What would an upper-middle-class young adult understand of caste dynamics and its perils faced by persons in rural Uttar Pradesh, if not by reading up on it or watching its creative portrayal?
The government, through its control over cinema, ensures that citizens remain passive consumers, in their own little bubbles and silos, easier to control when divided. The result is a society where people cease to be active participants in public life and instead come to view the elected government as their mai-baap—a paternal force to be obeyed, not questioned.
Add to this mix the weapons of mass distraction—sensational news cycles, empty spectacle like police encounters, and algorithm-driven social media outrage—and you have the perfect cocktail for control—a population numbed into submission and a regime free to rule unchecked.
Saurav Das is an investigative journalist writing on law, judiciary, crime, and policy.