KOLKATA: The revising committee of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has allowed the director of Bengali film ‘Chirodiner Ek Onnyo Premer Galpo’ to use the word ‘Musalman’. In February this year, TOI had reported on how Kolkata CBFC’s examining committee had asked the director to mute the word ‘Musalman’ that is uttered four times in the film.Ranjan Chowdhury’s film — 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.The initial show-cause notice issued to Chowdhury asked him to carry out eight excisions and modifications, four of which were the utterance of the word ‘Musalman’, for it to get the U/A certificate. The CBFC directive said that the word ‘Musalman’ had to be “muted in the duration mentioned” as it violates the guideline on “visuals or words contemptuous of racial, religious or other groups”.The revising committee, however, kept mum about this issue. None of the three modifications suggested have anything to do with the use of the word ‘Musalman’. “There was a conspiracy against my film by the then regional officer of CBFC Kolkata. The revising committee in Mumbai asked to make three modifications. One change is the deletion of the phrase ‘son of b****’ from the subtitles. The other change is to delete the words ‘gonja-gunji’ wherever they are uttered. I’ve also been asked to reduce the vulgar gestures from the item song. However, I haven’tbeen asked to delete the entire song — a recommendation made by the examining committee,” Chowdhury said.Datta, who has played a Muslim character in the film, is happy that the U/A certified film is finally releasing on July 6. “The initial censor bumps were hilarious. In a secular country, why can’t a director use the word ‘Muslim’? It wasn’t even used in a derogatory fashion,” Datta said, hoping that the government looks into these repeated issues of censorship that is only curbing creativity. “Because of these repeated incidents, many are staying away from subjects that they feel might be a victim of censorship. This has to stop,” he said.

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