Rahul Roy New Delhi

In the summer of 2003, more than two hundred documentary and short filmmakers from across India displayed unprecedented solidarity to come together under the banner of the Campaign Against Censorship. The spark that triggered off this collective protest was the attempt by the then BJP-led government to introduce censorship for Indian films at the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF2004), the premier documentary and short film festival of the country.

Through a new clause that required only the Indian filmmakers to submit censor certificates while submitting their films to MIFF, the government sought to censor and control the festival that had been free of censor certificates since its inception in 1991. The campaign is now preparing itself to face similar censorship tactics being employed by the Congress-led UPA government. Under the NDA government a politically motivated selection committee followed a simple procedure: films critical of the state on communal violence, environment, politics, globalisation, sexuality related issues had to be kept out. Moreover, if the filmmaker was in any way associated with the campaign, that too became a reason for his or her film to be kept out.

For this hatchet job, the then government required a selection committee with simple minds and a firm belief in the motto of the day: India is shining. Disguised by the blatantly skewed selection process, Girish Karnad refused to be on the jury of the festival.

In one of the most innovative forms of protest in recent times, the campaign struck back by organizing Vikalp, a parallel film festival in February 2004, right across the MIFF venue in Mumbai. The only qualification was to have a rejection letter from the government run film festival!

Moreover, more than a dozen filmmakers expressed solidarity with the campaign against censorship and chose to withdraw their selected films from MIFF, preferring to screen them at Vikalp instead. Vikalp: Films For Freedom was a huge success and many of the 'rejected' films have over the past year been selected by the most prestigious international film festivals and won awards. This package of sixty-four films has since then been screened in various parts of the country as a traveling Vikalp festival to audiences from all walks of life who have responded enthusiastically. The process of screening these films has not always been smooth: in Bangalore, the festival was attacked by BJP-affiliated communal groups and the auditorium owners received threats forcing the festival organizers to change locations.

With the defeat of the NDA in the last general elections, there was hope that censorship would no longer be the dominant mode of silencing uncomfortable truths. However, the last few months of the Congress-led UPA government has belied that hope.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, under the leadership of a self-professed liberal like Dr Jaipal Reddy, has refused permission recently to a documentary festival in Kolkata to show Indian documentaries that were not armed with a certification from the CBFC, while granting exemption to all foreign films. Several filmmakers withdrew their films from the festival as a show of protest even though they possessed the CBFC certification. And now reports are coming in about the next Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF 2006) again attempting to introduce the clause of censorship for Indian filmmakers.

When the BJP-led government introduced the clause of censor certificates at the Mumbai International Film Festival, it did so under the cover of needing the certificate to determine the date of production of the film. Since foreign films were allowed to determine their date of production by a self-declaration, this was a rather difficult argument to defend  for the ministry.

The Congress-led government is now becoming more blatant. They are imposing censorship without recourse to any excuse. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has proposed that the censorship clause be re-imposed on the Mumbai International Film Festival for Indian films.

We are probably seeing the gradual swing towards authoritarianism that most political parties display once they come to power. The government seems to be now admitting that they are scared of documentaries. They fear the very same voices that had unmasked the not so shining India under the previous regime.

The demand of the coalition of documentary filmmakers from around the country is simple: respect the international code of keeping film festivals free of censorship. Festivals are spaces that showcase the art of films in their original form without any political interference.

In India the power to 'officially' censor films is bestowed with the members of the Central Board of Film Certification. These members are granted the power to suppress any or all parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, security and other grounds. It is with these powers in hand that the Board has in the recent past made some strange decisions. 'Final Solution', a documentary on communal violence in Gujarat, was denied a certification on the plea that it would evoke communal disturbances. A few months later, the same board gave it a certificate without a single cut. The film has been widely shown across the country and there are as yet no reports of the screenings being followed by episodes of violence.

So how are these decisions made and overturned? How can a film become a threat to civil peace and then in a few months be allowed to be screened all over the country? Another documentary, 'In The Flesh', on the life of sex workers, has been denied certification on moral grounds.

Censorship regimes all over the world have laboured under the pressure of defining the 'average person in a community' whose tastes are cited most regularly as reasons for invoking censorship. Most of them know that there just doesn't exist an 'average person'. Anupam Kher, the most proactive Chairman of the CBFC in recent times, was often heard defending his moral and political policing by citing the reaction of 'an average Indian' who lived in a small town and required protection lest the scenes in question disturbed his moral fibre. Essentially, all defence of censorship is the defence of the morality and politics of the most conservative sections of the middle class.

Research on censorship across the world has demonstrated that two types of governments are most prone to utilize censorship: authoritarian and paternalistic. We in India have seen up close two authoritarian regimes that have blatantly used censorship to bolster themselves. The experience of Emergency where official censorship was further strengthened by the muscle power of the followers of Sanjay Gandhi has been well documented but the recent BJP-led regime does deserve a much deeper understanding of extra-judicial mode of silencing all critical voices. Police crackdown on any voice of protest against killings in Gujarat; raids and piling up of frivolous cases on sections of the Press; pressures on media houses to remove journalists from their pay roll; attacks on young people celebrating

Valentine's day, ransacking of libraries and art houses in the name of defending Hindutva; the use of state power to silence protests all over the country against a sell-out to multi national companies; are all faces of an arrogant authoritarianism that believed in its infallibility.

The congress in its new avatar, with Dr Jaipal Reddy heading the ministry directly responsible for exercising censorship, has opted for a paternalistic form of censorship. We often hear him make public statements about how he is opposed to the idea of censorship and would prefer self-regulation from the media. While his government, the public and the media go through the motions of a debate about self-regulation, the officials from his ministry follow the only path they are familiar with: decide for one billion Indians what they ought to see and what they shouldn't. And for good measure, they are pushing for censorship of film festivals, a space where filmmakers and cineastes gather to see and debate film form and aesthetics.

All documentaries are political and most documentaries trouble the ruling elite. Censorship controls the free flow of images and voices. The defence of censorship is almost always rooted in political control and consolidated through regular calls of moral panics. In a democracy, people must have the right to choose what they want and don't want to see. Ultimately, anti-censorship movements are about strengthening democratic traditions, which are under constant threats by authoritarian institutions with entrenched political or economic interests.

Rahul Roy is a filmmaker based in Delhi.

Last year, documentary filmmakers banded together in an unprecedented show of solidarity against the NDA government's attempts to censor their films. Is the UPA government any different?