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My question is, where were all the Indian men of Delhi? It cannot be equated with other modes of communication.” 1954: 13,000 Indian women of Delhi collect a petition to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that urges him to address the cinema’s wild potential to encourage “precocious sex habits.” Therefore, it has as much potential for evil as it has for good and has an equal potential to instill or cultivate violent or bad behaviour. The combination of act and speech, sight and sound in semi darkness of the theatre with elimination of all distracting ideas will have a strong impact on the minds of the viewers and can affect emotions. The Supreme Court of India claims: “Film censorship becomes necessary because a film motivates thought and action and assures a high degree of attention and retention as compared to the printed word. 1952: Cinematograph Act is established, ruling on-screen kissing to be indecent. Despite myself, I can’t help but feel really, really uncomfortable. Shocking, right? Silent film star Devika Rani kisses her hero like a champ in Karma (1933). The famous lip-lock took 4 minutes and remains the longest onscreen kiss to date. 1933: Devika Rani locked lips with her real life husband Himanshu Rai on screen in Karma. 1929: Silent film A Throw of Dice an exciting kiss between actors Seeta Devi and Charu Roy. She would later become known for her stock roles in the 1950s and 1960s as the hard-hitting conservative mother figure. 1922: The film Pati Bhakti showcases Lalita Pawar in a serious kiss. 1921: Bilat Ferat, a Bengali silent film directed by Dhirendra Nath Gunguli, displays intimate scenes and kissing galore.īased on Mahabharata, the film is about two kings who are vying for same hermit’s daughter. Boards of Censors would be established within 2 years in all major Indian cities, based on the guidelines of the British Board of Film Censors. This addresses the licensing of cinema houses and the certification of films declared suitable for public exhibition. 1918: Cinematographic Act is first passed by the country’s legislative council. 1896: The Lumiere Brothers bring cinema to India with a showing at the Watson Hotel in Bombay. 55 hope our descriptive timeline of this fascinating cause célèbre sheds light on this controversial impulse of nature we were all led to believe pure Indian film stars did not possess!ĭirector Biren Nag cleverly cuts from a threatened kissing scene in Kohra (1964) between Waheeda Rehman and Biswajeet to two fish finishing what the married couple started. Kissing in Bollywood films has jumped the spectrum from as liberal as the French in the 1920s to a wave of conservatism brought by the 1950s and again a shift back toward cinema’s early lip-locking roots by the 1990s. Why is there such hype around kissing in Hindi films? After all, we’re all modern citizens of the world, and certainly Indians are some of the most romantic. And when I first saw Shashi Kapoor sell his soul kissing in a Satyam Shivam Sundaram, I felt my world had come to an end. We created scores of young men and women like myself who get so uncomfortable when kissing appears on-screen if Indian parents are present, that we actually have to leave the room to relieve tension. Instead generations of Indians grew up in a world where pretty treetops and flowers were more passionate than any human interaction could ever become. In its early days, intimacy on-screen was not the heretical offense it later became–in fact, an appropriate diegetic display of affection was once standard fare in Hindi film! But a carefully constructed web of symbolic cinematography and allegorical imagery soon replaced the film industry’s brief encounter with physical romance. What many people do not know is that the taboo of kissing in Hindi films has evolved so dramatically since the birth of film. This blog post is likely to horrify just as many readers as it intrigues. Kissing in Bollywood films has been a volatile subject, a heated source of international ridicule and shame, for almost 100 years. Shashi Kapoor and Zeenat Aman kiss each other and a damp dupatta in Satyam Shivan Sundaram (1977).