Pahlaj Nihalani: No one notices when we are liberal

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chief Pahlaj Nihalani and the board has been in news recently for all the wrong reasons. The Censor Board has refused to certify Prakash Jha’s production venture, ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’ and while it has been done to a lot of movies in the past, this one blew out of proportion, as it is female-oriented.

The industry as well as fans went berserk criticising the CBFC and Pahlaj for this decision, and social media was on fire. This has however not affected Nihalani a bit, who is now defending himself saying that the board has been very liberal towards films like ‘Rangoon’ and ‘Befikre’ in the past, but no one noticed that. (Also Read: CBFC denies a certificate to ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’. Too afraid of the break-free ideology?)

Whenever there is an adult scene or offensive language used in a film, the board gives it a U/A rating, which means any child can watch the film when accompanied by an adult. However in UK, the same film gets A12 rating, which means children below the age of 12 cannot watch the film. In Singapore, it was rated NC16, means no children under 16 are allowed to see the film.

When asked about their harsh decision over ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’, Nihalani said, “We are sneered at here for being sanskari and over-conservative. But we’ve been more liberal in the censor certification of films like ‘Befikre’, ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ and ‘Rangoon’ than many countries abroad. But of course, no one notices when we’re liberal. Labelling us primitive and over-conservative is far more fashionable than discovering that we can be more liberal than the so-called first-world countries.”

What do you think about this statement of his?