Now, censor board wants 'Musalman' muted in film

KOLKATA: The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has asked the director of a Bengali film to mute the word "Musalman" that occurs at four places in the film.
Ranjan Chowdhury's film, 'Chirodiner Ek Onnyo Premer Galpo', starring Samadarshi Dutta, Shreela Mazumdar, Biswajit Chakraborty, Subhasish Mukherjee and Bangladeshi actor Shampa Hasnine, is based on the relationship between a Hindu and a Muslim.Chowdhury was given a list (a copy of which the director sent to TOI) after the CBFC examined the film, which mentioned nine modifications.
What shocked the director the most was the fifth modification, stating that the word "Musalman" had to be muted "wherever it occurs". It mentions the exact time where the word was used, and according to this list, the usage violated Guideline 2 (XII), which states that "visuals or words contemptuous of racial, religious or other groups" should not be presented.
All the lines, where the word "Musalman" occurs, are critical of the inter-faith relationship a girl from the "Chowdhury family" has got into.
Calls to CBFC regional director Samrat Bandyopadhyay on the issue went unanswered.
Those critical of the CBFC's "hypersensitivity" to the word "Musalman" say the word is not new to Bengali cinema. Suman Ghosh's 2006-film, 'Podokhhep', starring Soumitra Chatterjee and Nandita Das (for which Chatterjee had won the National Award for Best Actor), had the veteran actor saying "oi Musalman chheleti" in a rather condescending tone to hurt Das.
Director: Can’t my film mirror social reality?
Kaushik Ganguly’s National Award-winning 2017-film, ‘Bisorjon’, which deals with an inter-faith love story, uses the same word at least four times. “I was not asked to mute it. Every word used in a film is a free word. If a religion is not demeaned, I do not see why a word has to be muted. It should not be censored as long as the director is not endorsing a view against a religion,” Ganguly said.
Chowdhury insists he is not either endorsing or undermining any religion. “My film mirrors a social reality where we have people talking like this. I have to show the conflict and construct a narrative keeping these viewpoints to show Hindu-Muslim amity at the end. Muting the word means asking me not to mirror a social reality of our times. I am appalled by CBFC’s decision. This is completely unacceptable,” Chowdhury said.
The CBFC has also asked him to delete an entire item song, “Ami rai seje boshe achhi.” It has cited violation of Guideline 2 (VII), which refers to human sensibilities being offended by “vulgarity, obscenity or depravity”. Chowdhury has also been asked to delete another word, which occurs twice in the film. “What has come as a bigger surprise is that the CBFC does not even want me to retain the local flavour in the dialogues. People in rural Bengal use the words ‘goja guji’ pretty regularly. I have been asked to mute any reference to this phrase or its variations,” he said.