The Central Board of Film Certification has refused to clear a Malayalam documentary that details alleged torture techniques used by police officers during the Emergency, reported The Hindu.
Set between 1975 and 1977, Yadu Vijayakrishnan’s 21 Months of Hell includes interviews with victims of torture as well as re-enactments using actors.
According to the report, the censor board cited disrespect to the Indian flag and Mahatma Gandhi among the reasons for denying the movie a certificate. “They told me that they cannot take the risk of certifying this, as the documentary is political,” Vijayakrishnan told the newspaper. “There is no narration or reference to the larger politics of the day. The documentary is aimed at chronicling the torture methods, through interviews of the victims, and re-enactments of the torture. A board official asked me whether I had any ‘written government proof’ of these torture methods. The voices of the victims were not enough, apparently.”
A trailer shows a group of protesters shouting Mahatma Gandhi’s name. “Hail the living Gandhi [Indira] instead of the dead one,” a police officer says in response to their cries, before going on to thrash them.
Vijaykrishnan told The Hindu that the censor board had objected to this sequence. “In this scene, [Mahatma] Gandhi is not portrayed negatively, the policeman who says that line is,” Vijayakrishnan said. “In the same scene, a national flag falls on the ground from a protester’s hand, when he is beaten up. This is what the board members interpreted as disrespect.”
The filmmaker told The News Minute that he had applied for an A certificate and offered to cut scenes if necessary, but the board did not ask for any edits and instead rejected his application.
A censor board official told The Hindu that the director still had the option to approach the revising committee and said the movie was “not a documentary, but a docu-fiction”.
Vijaykrishnan told The News Minute that the censor board does not have a separate category for docu-fiction. “In historical documentaries, it is quite common to see re-enactments of historic scenes because they don’t have footage of those scene,” he said. “The CBFC does not have a category for docu-fiction. They have feature films, short films, documentaries and advertising. My film falls under the broader term of documentary.”