Sex, Smoking, Lesbians: Just Some Of The Reasons These 16 Films Are Banned In India

For a country that makes the most movies in the world, we sure as hell do ban movies in theatres a lot. You could blame it on sentiments getting offended but let’s be honest, it’s mostly just the rise of unemployment.

1. Bandit Queen

Based in the life of real-life activist, bandit and politician Phoolan Devi, the movie was deemed too violent and sexually exlicit by the Indian censor board.

2. Unfreedom

The most apparent reason for the film facing the axe by the censor board was pretty much because it revolved around a lesbian couple. There was some terrorism angle to it as well but it was the pretty much the homosexual couple thing, that the censor board could not digest.

3. Paanch

The Anurag Kashyap thriller was said to have been based on the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in 1997. If that wasn’t enough for the censor board, there was also a lot of foul language, violence and sex.. Most people just pirated it after a point.

4. Gandu

The film had rough language, nudity and fellatio, which obviously the censor board thought Indians knew nothing about and should know nothing about despite our population and all that, so they banned it in theatres.

5. Kissa Kursi Ka

The film was set to release in the year 1978, during the year of the emergency and had drawn parallels with the lives of Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. The government did not enjoy that very much and the film was banned.

6. Loev

While the critically acclaimed film has found a home on Netflix, according to GQ, the filmmakers did try to release the film in theatres but their efforts were in vain. The film celebrates the life of two old friends falling in love with each other despite being in completely different phases of life.

7. Inshallah, Football

This 2010 documentary about a young Kashmiri footballer who was denied a passport to go to Brazil and play under the pretext that his father was a militant in the 90s. The Censor Board had initially given it an A certificate but then later decided to ban it.

8. Fifty Shades of Grey

Quite possibly the most obvious name on the list, the film had nudity, fetishes, sex and all that stuff that old men in India do not think the rest of us should watch. So we didn’t get to see this film in theatres.

9. Blue Jasmine

Our censor board does this weird thing, where it inserts an anti-smoking disclaimer every time a character takes a puff. Woody Allen, however, wanted to have complete authority over his film and declined to oblige.

10. Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom

Well, this film was hella racist. That said, people should watch the film and then call it racist.

11. India’s Daughter

This BBC documentary about the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case was first stopped from being broadcast by court order and then when it was uploaded on YouTube, the Indian government had it removed. Which caused so much noise that everyone just picked it off Torrent and watched it anyway.

12. The Elements Trilogy

The three films mainly dealt with our painful history, social reform and the stigma associated with it in India and everybody was like, ‘what about our image and that’s not sanskari’ and so they banned all three movies, namely Fire, Earth and Water.

13. Magic Mike XXL

There was never any doubt that a film about male strippers wouldn’t be shown the greenlight in India. It was kinda obvious. Still it would be been nice to see amazing actors like Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello at their absolute best.

14. Dirty Grandpa

It was a pretty sleazy film but so are half the movies made in Bollywood. I guess, De Niro was too sexy for them. That’s why we never saw it in theatres.

15. Sins

The film revolved around a priest from Kerala, who falls in love with a woman and gets erotically involved with her. The film did not go down with a lot of people who believed it went against Catholicism. There was also some nudity in the film which the censor board did not enjoy.

16. Aandhi

The Gulzar film did release briefly before being banned by the Indira Gandhi government during the emergency. It is said to have been banned for flouting the election code of conduct.