Taking on the gatekeepers: on the Censor Board

Earlier this week, the Central Board of Film Certification announced that a six-member panel was being constituted to review the filmPadmavati, before it could be granted a censor certificate and publicly exhibited. Ignoring what the CBFC itself had to say about this, the Bombay High Court appointed a three-member panel of lawyers, to “review” the film. The idea underlying the actions of both the court and the Censor Board is that every self-identified “community” – no matter how loosely- or ill-defined – has an automatic right of veto over any work of art, expressed through its self-proclaimed and most noisy gatekeepers. Ever since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of obscenity law in 1964, it has given a clear indication that “useful art”, or art that can serve a “social purpose”, may be exempted from the penal consequences of obscenity, or other similar speech-restricting laws. Consequently, as long as the freedom of speech continues to be treated as a minor inconvenience that needs to be regulated and controlled in the “public interest”, and as long as the court continues to affirm “community” claims as having priority over individual freedoms, we cannot really expect the CBFC to protect free speech in a meaningful way.