Ideally, No Censorship Should Be Required: Prasoon Joshi, the Poet

What did Prasoon Joshi feel about censorship before he became the CBFC chief?

Prasoon Joshi is the new head of the Central Board of Film Certification. And while most of the film industry is welcoming the news, some are also going by a wait-and-watch attitude.

But what does Joshi, a hugely respected poet and screenwriter, feel about censorship himself? He shared his views in an earlier interview:

Censorship is a very sensitive topic. I feel ideally we should have a society where no censorship is required. We should be such a mature society where we can respect each other’s work, our differences. There will be differences and voices, there will be contradictions and confrontations. But as long as it’s not violent or hurtful, it’s fine. Democracy makes space for different voices. 

Prasoon Joshi

When you go to a garden, you don’t find rose and poppy flowers fighting because they are of different colours. And the fact that they are together despite their difference is what makes you exclaim about the beauty of the garden. Our society should be like that. We should have our own colour and fragrance and yet co-exist... But then we are very far from being a mature society. For that you require a certain level of education, a basic level of information available to everyone. When one section of society has no access to it at all and another has too much of it, things like censorship come in. - Information filters become different. The government has to take some precautions so the disbalance doesn’t go out of control and lead to violence of some kind. Censorship is a caution that the government is taking. Then where do you find room for expression in such a society? It’s a debatable point.

Without self-expression, we will be nothing. But you draw certain lines subconsciously. If you do it consciously, I feel you would be harming art. But the lines exist in our subconscious. 

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