Kamal on Censorship in India

teakada: "Do we have Director's Cut in Tamil DVDs? Until today I imagined not. According to Kamal Haasan, his Hey Ram DVD version has uncut scenes, the way he wanted them; uncut and uncensored. Venting out his anger at the Censor's 'rusty' laws and self-proclaimed guardians of culture, Kamal spoke at the British Deputy High Commision. 'The will of the censor board and the will of the people are two very different things,' says Kamal, declaring the Censor Board an outdated entity that needs to be 'revamped'. Time other people stood behind him and got something done about it.

IANS: 'I cannot make a film on a dam site or on a riot,' Kamal Hasaan said. 'They (censor board) water it down and make me ineffectual. 'What I say politically is also shut down in the pretext of protecting the viewer from sex.

'In the pretext of family entertainment we have a lot of the erotica creeping into films,' he alleged.

'We have to say what we have to, even if it is a political statement, a viewpoint of a Muslim or a Hindu,' he said. Compromises, he said, lead to 'the impotency of an artiste'.
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Kamal Haasan revealed how a woman Congress leader had raised objections, even before the film was released, and got the censor board to scissor the film.

'I had to delete an entire scene, because cut up, the remaining portion of the scene made no sense. "