Salman Khan and Anushka Sharma speak about censorship

We all know that after a lot of issues with CBFC ‘Udta Punjab’ finally hit the screens on June 17. Recently, in an interview, Anushka Sharma and Salman Khan, who are currently promoting ‘Sultan’, spoke about censorship.

Anushka, who had also faced issues during the release of her production venture ‘NH10’, said, “Ours was (still) not such a bad case. I haven’t seen ‘Udta Punjab’ yet, but my brother (Karnesh Sharma, who is also her partner in their production house Clean Slate) saw the film and was saying that we could have got ‘NH10’ passed without any cut had we gone to the High Court. At that time, we were told very silly things by CBFC, for instance, reduce hair-pulling by 20 percent! Now how was that possible? What is 20 percent? We couldn’t understand what they were saying, there was no reasonable conversation happening. Of course, we had to push our release which wasn’t cool but we didn’t let the film get diluted with the cuts imposed.”

“People are intelligent, films are categorised as ‘Adult’ for a reason. We know what we are watching, what is right and what is wrong. We have the power of reasoning within us. Let’s not assume that everybody is dumb and foolish, we are not children so we shouldn’t be treated like one. Secondly, if you put restrictions on a creative person and tell somebody ‘don’t think this way’, then you will never be able to create something great. You have to give filmmakers some liberty. Nobody is doing things just for the heck of it, no one is abusing because they feel like it. That is the way people talk in certain regions. When we were shooting ‘NH10’ in Haryana, every third word in their spoken language was an abuse that is their normal way of talking. You can’t show characters talking with lot of respect in movies. What we are showing is reality within reasonable restrictions. But 89 cuts and then the film (‘Udta Punjab’) is passed with one cut… obviously the CBFC guidelines have to change,” she added.

Talking about it, Salman said, “There is a ‘U’ certificate, there is the ‘U/A’ certificate and for both these certifications there are a certain number of cuts. Then you have an ‘A’ certificate where they can impose one or two cuts or may be no cuts. Then there is also X, XX, XXX… people who want to watch those kind of films, let them watch.”

Salman’s film ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ had also faced issues with CBFC. They were told to change the title of the film. The actor said, “After all the promos of ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ were ready, the CBFC asked us to change the title and we asked why. My simple reasoning was, if Bajrangi was going to Maharashtra, the title would have been ‘Bajrangi Bhau’, if he was heading towards Uttar Pradesh, then we would have picked ‘Bajrangi Bhai’ and if it was Punjab then we would have gone for ‘Bajrangi Paaji’. But we were showing him going to Pakistan, so we had to call him ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’. What is the big issue? If CBFC feels that there could be law and order problem in the country, then they should not take it ahead and give the matter to respective bodies to deal with.”

We so agree with Anushka and Salman’s point of view.

Also Read: Salman Khan’s film with Rajkumar Santoshi to release in Christmas 2017?

Murtuza Iqbal

‘Eat Sleep Bollywood Repeat’ is his life Mantra. Dance is his first love and Rani Mukerji is his eternal crush. He is someone who loves being himself, and as for the ones who don’t agree, his reply? “Talk to my hand!”