Jayan Cherian Part 2: ‘Censorship is a colonial law, it has no place in a democracy’

Filmmaker Jayan K Cherian (left); (clockwise) poster of 'Rhythm of Dammam' (2024); stills from 'Papilio Buddha' (2013), and 'Ka Bodyscapes' (2016).

“Rhythm of Dammam is my most benign film,” says Jayan K Cherian, 58, the Kerala-born, New York-based filmmaker about his latest work, the first-ever fictional film on the Siddi community of Uttara Kannada’s (north Karnataka’s) Yellapur. Rhythm of Dammam premiered at the 55th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and is next headed to the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK). Cherian, who has had run-ins in the past with censorship in India and the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), clears the air at the outset. In this final segment of a two-part interview, Jayan Cherian talks about his films past and present and censorship at home and in the world. Edited excerpts:

Also Read: Jayan Cherian Part 1: ‘Hindu Siddis are found only in India’s Konkan region; re-enslaved by upper caste landowners’

The CBFC had refused to certify two of your films in a row, Papilio Buddha (2013) and Ka Bodyscapes (2016). For Papilio…, you’d then appealed to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT). Since FCAT has been abolished in 2021, what would filmmakers do now?

They can go to court. (Smiles)

A still from 'Papilio Buddha' (2013).

Your films have been labelled political in the past and ran into problems with censorship in India. If Papilio Buddha (2013) foregrounds Dalit oppression, Ka Bodyscapes (2016), an artist’s struggle in a homophobic society, was called an insult to god because of a painting of a bare-bodied figure resembling Hanuman. After these episodes, do you now self-censor in your art?

No, I keep at it. First, I want to clarify that people wrongly portray me as a political filmmaker. I’m not at all one. I just tell the story straight on my terms. Papilio… shows the Dalit point of view and Dr Ambedkar’s perspective on [Mahatma] Gandhi. I’m a storyteller. Some people portray me as left-wing. I’m not left or right. I’m not a Marxist. I don’t endorse any political parties, institutions, groups or agenda. The only and last political institution I’m a member of is family.

In Rhythm of Dammam, I try to explore the spirit of the Siddi people, their imaginations and their myth. And I only focus on the intergenerational trauma of the human trafficking [slave trade] that happened centuries ago, and the present-day social, class and caste location of these people, but nothing to do with any political philosophy. Of course, everything is political in a way. And in the Indian context, people want to put you in a bracket.

My film Ka Bodyscapes is about an artist’s struggle to show his art. That is a cautionary tale against people who try to oppress the freedom of artistic expression. And that film, which is against art censorship and moral policing, got banned. Look at the irony. The central character’s plight becomes the filmmaker’s plight.

Ka Bodyscapes was not an insult to god. I’m part of human history and, so is [Hindu god] Hanuman. It’s the same as any historical figure for me. Hanuman is my mythology, my god, too. I grew up with that.

But you are Christian…

You say Christian because of my name…(smiles), I have no affiliation with Christianity. I read that book [Bible] a couple of times just as any other book. My parents, in Kerala, belong to Christianity. They [his ancestors] probably have been the early slave community or probably (converted) to escape caste oppression. For me, it (religion) doesn’t hold any special significance. Only one iconography of a goddess whom I’ve been in love with was the Tibetan goddess Vajravarahi, an amazing battle-ready female figure.

What do you make of the CBFC?

Censorship is a very colonial law. There is no place for censorship in a democracy. Do you know the history of censorship? In 1896, when Lumière brothers’ L’Arrivée d’un Train a la Ciotat was shown as a spectacle in markets. The Charity Bazar (Bazar de la Charité) in Paris caught fire from cellulose nitrate [killing 126 people], which was used in celluloid. It is explosively flammable. That fire incident started safety intervention by the city government before [giving licences to] any kind of exhibitions. In 1909, in Britain, a similar law [Cinematograph Act] was passed for safety reasons, and gradually the content was monitored, too. One kind of control led to another. Censorship started there.

In 1918, the British India passed the Indian Cinematograph Act, curtailing the free expression of the colonial natives. They thought the imbecile and childlike Indian natives had no right to choose good or bad, the elite White man will select it for them. So, they made censor boards for regions: Madras, Rangoon, Kolkata, Bombay, Lahore. That 1918 Cinematograph Act was reinvented by Nehru in 1948, but used the same colonial patronising White man’s vision about prajas (the people of India). The British Cinematograph Act was remodelled as Indian Cinematograph Act in 1952, which still prevails in India. All the censorship is according to that. That is a disgrace to the democracy. That law needs to be scrapped. Any democratic society, in England or America, they don’t have censorship. England has some kind of licensing, that’s all. But America [Hollywood] doesn’t have [any government] censorship.

They can rate the films, PG13 or NC-17, that is also moral policing but they can rate it. But censorship, what’s the point of it? When people have a counter-narrative to the government’s official narrative on any matter, that is democracy. If there is no space for a counter-narrative, there’s no more democracy. That is the model of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or Pol Pot’s world [Cambodia]. We have had that kind of dictatorial people, and their autocratic societies. But I don’t think any of the modern democracies [barring India] have this (censorship) rule. I don’t know how the Indian film fraternity is tolerating this. We like to be ruled, right? (Laughs) I hate it. I will fight to my death for such things.

A still from 'Ka Bodyscapes' (2016).

Certain people took offence to Ka Bodyscapes and presumed that it shows a bare and gay Hanuman. A year before your film, in 2015, a similar ire led to the Charlie Hebdo shooting incident in Paris.

I commissioned an artist to draw my characters, one of whom, the lover, is a Hanuman bhakt (worshipper/devotee). And the protagonist sees his lover as the ultimate form of his God. So, the painter paints his lover as a representation of that, and not Hanuman. That is his affection, seeing the lover as god, the most revered form of being. And that is what the painting shows. I didn’t mean to insert any political issue. Being a storyteller, I believe I have the right to say whatever I want to. I believe that freedom of expression is absolute, but there has to be some political correctness there. You have no right to physically harm anyone. This isn’t the time of Rangila Rasul (Colourful Prophet, 1927; the book led to the killing of its publisher Mahashe Rajpal by Ilm-ud-Din in 1929). We are a modern society. We cannot kill each other. [Russian literary critic-philosopher] Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of ‘dialogism’ argues that meaning is created only through dialogue and social interaction.

You have your opinion, you respect others’ opinion. Insulting each other is bad. But a cartoon is not an insult. A cartoon or an artistic representation is an expression. And Charlie Hebdo (French satirical magazine) were drawing cartoons of popes to pop singers and gods. That is the tradition of Europe. You can look at the French classical literary figures, they have been rebellious and profane in their work. Art is always subversive, especially cinema, only then can it have an edge and be sharp. When art is not subversive, it conforms. If art loses its teeth, it’s a lame thing, with no effect. [Chilean-French filmmaker] Alejandro Jodorowsky — the maker of El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), the surrealist film which shows a frog with [Christ’s] cross, which led to riots in Mexico City — once said, if a film is shown in a city, at least, a riot should happen, otherwise that film is insignificant.

Look at the irony, one of our champions, the first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had a friend in England, the renowned writer Aubrey Menen, whose mother was Irish and father a Malayalee from Kerala. Menen was the part of the Bloomsbury Group (to which belonged DH Lawrence). Menen’s book The Ramayana as Told by Aubrey Menen (1954) was banned in India, not in colonial British India but in independent India, by his own friend Nehru who was the then prime minister. Nine Hours to Rama [book by Stanley Wolpert and film by Mark Robson] was banned, too, in India in 1963. In 1988, India was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. We are getting more and more primitive. We have to grow thicker skins and tolerate others’ expression. We have no right to impose our belief on other people. That is not a peculiarisation for Hindutva. Compared to some other countries, we (Indians) are far better, but we are more sensitive and we are getting very authoritarian day by day.

A still from 'Rhythm Of Dammam'.

There is a narrative that the West loves to watch those Indian films that spotlight the problems in Indian society. But the West and America in particular has a lot of issues of their own, there’s racism, anti-abortion and anti-immigration policies, being a genocide enabler, among others. As a filmmaker of colour, who lives in the US, would you like to train your lens on these?

You mentioned it rightly. One of my film Tree of Life (2007), a small film, I’d shot in New York City in a taxi/cab. I made this in Abbas Kiarostami’s masterclass. I’d cast a Sikh cabbie, who was from Punjab, spoke poor English and operated in New York, and Broadway actor Steve Clark, as a White, Christian evangelist, who is actually a terrorist who’s delivering some Chinese bamboo trees to (basically planting bombs in) abortion clinics. In that, I explore racism and religious fundamentalism in America. In another film later, Shape of the Shapeless (2010), I explore gender fluidity through a person who traverses social gender roles in the span of one day, in the underbelly of the Broadway and underground New York theatre. He’s an architect at an engineering firm during the day, a yogi running a meditation centre in the evening and, by late night, a drag queen named Rose doing burlesque theatre. That film was inspired by Judith Butler’s book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1992). I have also made a short film about migrant labourers coming from Mexico, especially from Chiapas, who are stopped or shot at the American border.

As a filmmaker, is it more liberating to be living in America and not India because of artistic censorship here?

No, America is not a liberated land at all. America has more complexities than India. And America has more kinds of oppressive and ghettoized worlds. In Appalachian Hill area, you can see the poor people who are drug-infested White people. Only the poisonous stuff is leading them to leave racism, they’re very much racist who believe all their problems are because of poor immigrants, but they’re themselves so poor. They are the prajas (subjects) of [Donald] Trump and these people are very unfortunate people, they keep on voting against their class interest. This kind of capitalism is not a problem at all for me. I don’t care about it. But these people always vote against their self-interest. The same is in all countries. Look at Belgium. In France, last election, Marine Le Pen’s party won by 49 per cent votes. Hers (National Rally) is a Nazi party, obviously a racist party.

But there are beautiful people around you everywhere. Liberal people…and liberal itself is not a big thing at all…conservative people are also very nice. So, just live together, tolerate other people and live in harmony. As an artist, that’s all I have to say.