The recent news of Censor Board’s move to mute the word lesbian from the movie ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’ is another baffling move of the many different issues of censorship with respect to our Hindi films.
I don’t want to argue if ‘lesbian’ is a cuss word or not. I just want to remind Pahlaj Nihalani – the current Censor Board chief about the movies he had produced during his time.
Yes this man was a film producer and some of the scenes and shots are truly offensive.
In ‘Haathkadi’ Reena Roy abuses saying ‘bevde’ (abusive slang for drunkard)
Rakesh Roshan is shown to be a bad guy. He sexually harasses women. In one scene he very casually even rapes and murders a girl.
The below scene from the movie ‘Ilzaam’ has words and shots that as per the way censorship is heading these days, this entire scene would have become a cuss scene.
Prem Chopra starts with the dialogue, “Laga lo”. Of course he explains then “gale laga lo.”
The use of the word ‘hawas’ is allowed, cigarette is openly smoked and the torture scene when he is poking the knife near Govinda’s eye is quite violent.
There is a serious attempt to rape scene also in this film. Shatrughan Sinha comes at the right time and saves the girl. Now comes the most offensive part.
Shatrughan Sinha justifies that he would have taken him to jail but he is relieving him only because he hailed from a good family background and his father was a respectable man. After hearing this amazing justification I went ‘khamosh’.
Seriously amazing logic!!!
That kind of portrayal of law and irrelevant justification to such serious criminal acts is what is truly offensive.
Here the Censor Board has a problem with the word lesbian?!!
Now this is apparently a comedy scene but listen to the dialogue at 1:11: (Movie – Shola Aur Shabnam)
Meri ladkiyaan itni bhi buri nahi hain ki pehele hi baar mein gaalon mein pappi de de (My girls are not so bad that they would kiss the guys in the first meeting itself)
Therefore the character of a girl is directly proportional to the time she takes to get physical. This stereotype projection and hinting the rules that women need to adhere to has resulted in a deeply rooted regressive mentality. If a woman kisses in the first meet then she is immediately termed as characterless and if she is having sex then she has to be a sl*t.
We are debating here if lesbian is a cuss word or not.
When you Mr. Pahlaj Nihalani produced such films there was no fuss but today lesbian became a cuss!
