The Hindu : Censorship: Unofficial might

The Hindu : Censorship: Unofficial might: "The recent experiences of some independent documentary filmmakers, who chose to look at the events in Gujarat, post-Godhra, illustrate a disturbing reality — the contradictions between the opinions and ideas of the unofficial censors and those of the official ones, says KALPANA SHARMA. Here, she looks at the larger issue of the freedom of expression.

'Godhra Tak' has been preceded by a number of other films. One of the first off the block was 'Aakrosh', a 20-minute film by Geeta Chawda and Ramesh Pimple of the People's Media Initiative, Mumbai. The film was submitted to the censor board in February this year. Within a week, the application was rejected on the grounds that 'the film depicts violence and reminds the people about Gujarat riots last year. It shows the government and the police in a bad light ...' The film was banned.

Gauhar Raza, Delhi-based activist and scientist with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, is not interested in battling with the censors. He has made two films on Gujarat, "Zulmaton ke daur mein (In Dark Times"), which was on the 1998 elections and "Junoon Ke Badte Kadam (Evil stalks the land") which was on the recent communal violence in the State. The first one was made for television, for the now defunct TVI Company. It was telecast just once and then abandoned. Both films, he says, are part of his battle against the spread of communalism. He plans to use them in ways that generate discussion, especially among young people. But even this has not been easy. Screenings of his films were stopped in Goa during the elections last year and at the end of the year, a showing in a Mumbai college was stopped when the Shiv Sena raised objections. The police confiscated the tapes on the grounds that Raza did not have a censor certificate, something that is not required for a private showing.

Award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker Suma Josson's film "Gujarat — A laboratory of Hindu Rashtra" was shot in three days just before the 2002 State assembly elections when Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were returned to power.

Josson has not submitted this film for censorship. Her previous film on the Mumbai riots of 1992-93 — "Bombay's Blood Yatra" — took two years before it was finally cleared without any cuts by the appellate tribunal.

Patwardhan feels that a censor certificate is a kind of insurance policy for political filmmakers because it denies the police the right to disrupt showings or confiscate the films. His latest victory is getting a censor certificate for his epic three-hour film "War and Peace". The censor had demanded 22 cuts. Patwardhan succeeded in getting it passed without a single cut.

Another filmmaker who is following in Patwardhan's footsteps is Rakesh Sharma. His film on the Gujarat earthquake of January 2001, "Aftershocks" created a stir because it revealed the other agendas at work under the guise of relief and rehabilitation. "