'Bloody' Indian not allowed in Hawaizaada

30 Jan 2015

You may have heard it in every film that has been made on the theme of Colonial India from Manmohan Desai's Mard to Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan . Somewhere or the other the Britishers in Indian films are bound to refer to Indian as 'bloody Indians' No more so. For Vibhu Puri's delicately drawn period film Hawaizaada which is set in Colonial India, the censor board in all its wisdom asked the 'bloody' to be removed from the 'bloody Indian.' Sighs the director Vibhu Puri, "I had no choice but to replace the word 'bloody' in 'bloody Indian' with 'crazy'. I am aware that the Britishers in our films have been shown to use the term 'bloody Indian' in numerous films. But if I had insisted I'd have got a 'UA' certificate instead of 'U'. So I preferred to change the supposedly offensive word as it made no difference to my narrative." Vibhu was also asked to remove and replace a word prefixing a holy book in the soundtrack.

Says Vibhu, "Since it's a religious matter this cut makes more sense to me. But the other cut does seem a bit...errr, crazy. However I've no complaints. I am happy that the censor board didn't cut a single shot in my film."