CBFC asks Indian Statistical Institute professor not to say Congress, CPM

KOLKATA: After Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s ‘Gujarat’ cut in the hands of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), former professor of Indian Institute of Statistics Ashoke Kumar Datta can’t use references to Congress and CPM in a documentary directed by his National Award winning son Anirban Datta. Band member of Mohiner Ghoraguli Pradip Chattopadhyay has been asked not to use the word ‘CRPF’. A total of four cuts and one insertion were recommended by CBFC for “Kalikshetra” – a 56-minute-long documentary that traces the history of Kolkata.Its director, a Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) alumnus who also taught at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), has now approached the revising committee of CBFC Delhi. “If I don’t get justice there, I will approach the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal,” the director said.Incidentally, Prof Asoke Kumar Datta was the head of the department of ISI’s electronics and communication sciences unit, a life fellow of the Acoustical Society of India and a senior guest researcher at Jadavpur University’s Sir C V Raman Center for Physics. “Why should I let CBFC tamper with his recollection of the Naxal movement in my documentary?” the director asked.In the documentary, the director has interviewed witnesses of the Naxalite movement. Datta was one of the witnesses of the movement. In the documentary, he has recounted the atrocities on young Naxals in the Baranagar Cossipore suburbs and said: “Dwijeshda (scientist Dwijesh Dutta Mazumdar) told me that Naxal cleansing has begun in Baranagar. These guys are saying Congress and police are together killing Naxals. I asked what does it imply? I think CPM is also involved. Our party (Samajwadi Party) can’t protect them. So it is better to disband the committee (Baranagar Peace Committee) itself. All these members of our Peace Committee are murderers… Each time the news of killing arrived, these CPM and Congress leaders… they were smacking their lips.”Datta told TOI that this recommendation is an “attempt to distort” his recollections. “I am talking about CPM and Congress parties in the 70s. I stand by every word that I have said and am ready to face any consequence. In a documentary, every speaker ought to have the right to share his experiences. Let the viewers decide whether they want to agree or disagree with it. The CBFC can’t gag us,” Datta said.Pradip Chattopadhyay had gone back in time to recall what he had personally witnessed during the Naxalite movement. “Suddenly, we saw CRPF had come and cordoned us completely. That night, all of 81 of us, were loaded in police vans. Each of us got severely thrashed with a baton. This was the minimum. They shattered my possibility of moving forward with this movement further,” Chattopadhyay has said in the documentary. He is now zapped with the CBFC’s recommendations. “I recounted what had happened to me. If I delete the word CRPF, what’s the point in saying anything? I feel like laughing at the suggestion. At this rate, we will soon be told that we can’t even look at the sun!” Chattopadhyay said.The director is miffed with the two other cuts. “We have a very senior Hindi writer from Kolkata - Geetesh Sharma - giving his account of how GD Birla had suggested Mahatma Gandhi to accept the suggestions of the Simon Commission and say no if it goes to divide the country. In this context, being a Marwari himself, he was mentioning the ‘cunningness’ of the Marwari community. This is his viewpoint and not necessarily the viewpoint of the film or the filmmaker. The film doesn’t have a single viewpoint, but gathers a multitude of viewpoints around events to give a pluralistic point of view. However, CBFC wants to remove this whole chunk which is about a minute of the film,” the director pointed out.The other cut is about the “Action Day” called by the Muslim League demanding Partition. “This was the first hand account by one of the principal characters of the film - Amiyo Bhattacharya. In fact, he was the one who had published the report in the journal of CPI (then undivided) which was titled ‘Langol’,” the director said.Though the names and profiles of the prominent interviewees have been clearly mentioned at “aesthetically chosen point of their appearance”, the CBFC wants the references in the beginning. “The CBFC has asked me to mention sources of books supporting my research. I found this demeaning for an anecdotal film where people are telling their stories themselves,” he said.In the show cause notice to the director, the CBFC has referred to violation of guidelines 2 (xiv) and 2 (xix). “These guidelines, which deal with promoting communal, anti-scientific and anti-national attitude, defamation or contempt of court, are actually very open and inclusive. I am very puzzled how the same have been interpreted in such a regressive manner. Being a student of cinema and also as a person interested in film academics, I found the intention behind recommending the cuts very problematic and restrictive to the possibility of a film,” he alleged. Making film, he said, is a “political act”. “Taking away the politics of it makes a film toothless. I believe the freedom of expression is not only the freedom to express but also to place the expression as well,” the director added.