Administering Disseminations: Film Exhibition and Censorship During the Great War in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the debates on film exhibition and censorship during the war years in India. The First World War (1914–18) was a watershed moment for the rapidly burgeoning cinema exhibition business in India. During the war, the government of India was caught by surprise at the pace with which the business had spread in the country. When the need for cinema propaganda arose in India, the government began to assess the nature of commercial networks the cinema exhibition companies had been able to build. Throughout the war years, the Government of India debated ways of intervening in the cinema business either by competing with the monopolistic cinema companies or by introducing censorship laws to control exhibition spaces and content. At the behest of the war propaganda department in London, the government of India found itself playing a reluctant arbitrator in a bitter competition between two influential cinema companies – Madan and Bandman – for the exhibition of Britain Prepared. This article further draws attention to the continuities between pre-war censorship debates and the war-year debates that led to the enactment of the first Cinematograph Act (1918) in India. By exploring the pre-war censorship debate about the exhibition of Johnson-Jeffries film, this article reviews a commonly held assumption in Indian film history that film censorship began in the country during the war years.