On 28 September we wrote that the CBFC had cleared three films in a week without a single cut, and that the real test was still coming. We said it would not be an action film or a thriller. It would be a film that said something inconvenient about somebody with the standing to object.
Here it is, and the mechanism that caught it was not the CBFC at all.
What Happened
Maatrubhumi, originally titled Battle of Galwan, is a Salman Khan film about the 2020 Galwan Valley clash between Indian and Chinese troops. It is directed by Apoorva Lakhia and co-stars Chitrangda Singh.
It has been held up for months. On 2 October, per Box Office Worldwide citing Bollywood Hungama, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a No Objection Certificate for a revised version.
Per Glamsham, the revised cut is “highly altered compared to the original version” and “now also talks about the relationship between India and China in a positive light”.
The attribution matters here. That characterisation traces to unnamed I&B officials via a single outlet’s reporting. Nobody has gone on the record, no official statement has been issued, and the production has not commented on what was changed.
Target release is 13 November, and the film still requires CBFC certification separately.
The Gate Nobody Writes About
This is the part worth understanding, because it is not the censorship story most readers assume.
The CBFC certifies films. That process is public, it produces a certificate with a rating and a cut list, and it can be appealed. We have been tracking it all week, and on the evidence of The Vvaan, The Paradise and Drishyam 3, it has been functioning more like a rating body than a censor.
A Ministry NOC is a different thing entirely. It sits upstream of certification, applies to films touching foreign policy, defence and similar areas, operates without published criteria, produces no cut list anybody can read, and has no obvious appeal route.
We have written about this gate before from the other direction. The IDSFFK dispute in Kerala last week was the same mechanism: films stuck in an interdepartmental clearance process, with the Ministry and the festival unable to agree on how many had been refused, and no public record to settle it.
So the week’s certification story is not that India stopped cutting films. It is that the cutting moved to a room with no window in it.
The Title Change Is The Tell
Battle of Galwan became Maatrubhumi.
The first names a specific military confrontation with a specific adversary on a specific date. The second means motherland. One is a historical event. The other is a sentiment.
You do not need the cut list to work out the direction of travel.
The Argument For It, Stated Properly
There is a real case on the other side and it deserves stating rather than caricaturing.
Galwan involved serving soldiers, a contested border, an adversary state and a diplomatic relationship that successive governments have worked to stabilise. A commercial film dramatising it reaches an audience of tens of millions and can affect public sentiment in ways a policy document cannot. Governments everywhere take an interest in how armed confrontations with neighbours are portrayed, and India is not unusual in having a mechanism for it.
Nor is the film being blocked. It is being released, on a major date, with a major star.
Why It Still Should Not Work Like This
Because none of it is visible.
A CBFC decision, however much filmmakers dislike it, generates a document. You can see what was cut and argue about it in public. A Ministry NOC generates nothing a citizen can read. We know this film was substantially altered only because somebody briefed a trade journalist anonymously.
And the families of the soldiers who died at Galwan have a legitimate interest in how that night is depicted. So does everyone else. A process that decides what a nation is allowed to dramatise about its own recent history, without publishing a word about how it decided, serves nobody except the people operating it.
Bengaluru Baath Take
We spent last week praising the CBFC for rating rather than cutting, and that praise stands on the evidence we had.
It now needs a caveat. A board that passes films uncut looks considerably better when another arm of the same government is quietly requiring a film about a border clash to say nicer things about the other side before it can be released at all.
Publish the criteria. Publish the decisions. If a film about Galwan needs changes for reasons of national interest, say which changes and say why, and let the country decide whether it agrees.
Our standing complaint about Indian film policy this month has been the same in every piece: the decisions may be defensible, but nobody will show their working. Kerala, Karnataka and now this.
Sources
- Box Office Worldwide, the I&B NOC, the revised version and the pending CBFC certification, citing Bollywood Hungama
- Glamsham, the characterisation of the changes and the release date
- Gujarat Samachar, clearance coverage
- CineTalkers, theatrical clearance
