Bollywood Bats For Kashyap On Udta Punjab Censorship Row

Major Bollywood celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Mahesh Bhatt on Thursday lent their support to Anurag Kashyap, who has locked horns with censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani over his alleged demands for major cuts in "Udta Punjab".

The censor board has sought around 89 cuts to the film, whose portrayal of the state's drug problem is said to have angered Punjab's ruling Akali Dal, a BJP ally.

In a press conference on Wednesday (08 May), Mahesh Bhatt said it was a shame that a movie which "holds a mirror" and shames the Indian society about the drug menace "is being strangulated".

"This is not the industry's problem at all, this is the problem of this country," he said.

"A person who is a roadblock and not a facilitator should be removed. That is something intolerable, unaccepted to film fraternity and we want him out. His move is malicious and vicious. He lies, delays the process and will bully the person," his brother, Mukesh, who is the president of Film and Producers Guild of India, said.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal had supported the film against the censors, only to draw a rebuff from Kashyap who asked them not to "colour my fight with any political affiliation".

Amitabh Bachchan, in Kolkata to promote his thriller TE3N, said he was "not quite aware of what the issue really is" but added: "All I can say is that don't kill creativity. When you kill creativity, you kill our souls."

He went on: "All of us in the film industry, all of us have faced this issue... at some point. There has to be a concerted and joint effort by the industry to get over this. I hope that we can devise a system where there is certification rather than censorship."

Aamir Khan has also raised his voice in support of the makers of Udta Punjab. The PK actor called Udta Punjab a relevant film conveying a social message about the rising drug abuse among the youth of Punjab and said demanding cuts in the film only reflected badly on the board.

He added, "It's very important that filmmakers have a voice which is not throttled. In any society, the voice of the artiste should be free to speak what he wants to speak."

How Big is Punjab’s Drug Problem
According to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, there are 836 drug users per 100,000 people in the state while the all India figure is 250 per 100,000 (for 2012). Punjab is also the only state in recent times to commission a drug abuse study. The Punjab Opioid Dependence Survey, which was conducted between February and April 2015, found that 230,000 people in the state were drug users.

The size of the drug economy in the state is also mind boggling. An AIIMS study has found that the agricultural rich state had spent Rs 7,500 crore annually on drugs (a massive Rs 6,500 crore on heroin alone). Many previous studies have stated that Punjab's opioid dependents are four times more than the global average.

The AIIMS study added that some 2.3 lakh of them are opioid dependent and 1.23 lakh are addicted to heroin, which passes through the Pakistan border. Almost all the heroin that comes to Punjab is through the Pakistan border.

Punjab also ranks among the top five states that reported the biggest drug seizures in 2014. The other four were Mizoram, Manipur, Assam and Uttar Pradesh.