Abstract

ABSTRACT The debate on film censorship in colonial India is rife with assertions that censorship was introduced to empty Indian films of their nationalist content. But the examination of the Bengal Board of Film Register shows that for the period between 1920 and 1928, indigenously produced films counted for much less than American films, and film censorship during the silent era was more focused on female sexuality rather than nationalism and politics. Most of the cuts affected in films exhibited in Bengal Presidency were sexual rather than explicitly political in nature. And by the end of the 1920s, the discourse of film censorship in India would metastasize around the moral need to protect the white woman.

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