Will It Play in Punjab?

By DEXTER FILKINS

Dec. 13, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW DELHI — “Kama Sutra,” the lavishly filmed story of four lovers in the 16th century, is mostly about India.

But it’s also about sex, and that’s why almost no one in India has been able to see it.

The film, named for the ancient Indian sex manual, is bogged down in a dispute with the country’s censors, who have deemed it too smutty for the people’s good.

The fight has landed the movie’s Indian-born director, Mira Nair, in an imbroglio with her own government, even as the film earns praise around the world as a sumptuous evocation of the nation’s past.

After 14 months of haggling, “Kama Sutra” has yet to be screened in the country it is about.

The clash has illuminated the gulf between the India of old and new, between the self-styled guardians of the country’s 4,000-year-old traditions and its avatars, often schooled and living in the West, of shock and change.

“We are proud of our culture and we want to save it,” said Sushma Swaraj, a former minister of broadcasting and information and an advocate of strict censorship. “We are not prudes. There is a difference between obscenity and art.”

Nair, 40, who directed “Mississippi Masala” and “The Perez Family,” said her current movie draws on Indian traditions that are more tolerant of sex and sexuality. She said she has tried to accommodate India’s censors in every reasonable way. But, she said, they have asked for too much--and more than what they ask of directors who live in India.

“The masses in India are shoveled gratuitous sex and violence--nothing like what I have made,” said Nair, who lives in South Africa. “I think some of the censors just wanted to stop me.”

“Kama Sutra,” named one of the 10 best films at the Toronto Film Festival, is a luxuriantly erotic movie. The story revolves around a servant, played by Indira Varma, who grows up with a woman destined to be queen. The beautiful servant inspires the king to infatuation and hence provokes a rivalry between the servant and the queen and between the king and the servant’s lover.

The servant, Maya, eventually enters the king’s harem, where she employs the lovemaking secrets contained in the ancient text for which the movie is named. True to the book, in “Kama Sutra,” bodies entwine, enfold and unwrap. Women appear completely nude. In one scene, an unclad woman showers kisses on another’s body. In another scene, the king rapes his bride.

The sex scenes appear within the context of “Kama Sutra’s” larger story. Still, they’re a bit more graphic--and arguably better filmed--than similar films in the U.S., where the movie received an R rating (and is now available on video).

Nair, who has been staying in Los Angeles while completing her next movie, “My Own Country,” said she never expected the graphic lovemaking scenes to make the Indian movie screens. When the Indian Censor Board initially recommended eight cuts, Nair agreed with little argument.

She even offered to have “women’s only” nights at Indian theaters. In neighboring Sri Lanka, such nights for “Kama Sutra” have drawn huge crowds, and many women say they feel more comfortable seeing the movie without men present.

“Direct scenes of lovemaking are off limits in India. I accepted that,” Nair said.

p Nair said she spent an additional $60,000 to make the cuts as clean as possible.

But then the censors asked for more cuts. And more.

After a year of taking her case through the various layers of the Indian bureaucracy, Nair received permission to air the movie in English only. But for versions in three of India’s other languages, which are together spoken by at least 600 million people, the censors demanded that more be taken out.

Nair refused. The fate of “Kama Sutra” now rests with a Bombay judge.

The trims suggested by one group of censors were written in the deadpan style of a science term paper.

“Delete the visuals of the bare back and breasts of Maya when Raja makes love to her,” reads one letter from censor Sanjeevni Kutty.

“From the lovemaking between Maya and Jai, delete the following visuals,” the letter reads, “A. Bare breasts of Maya; B. Entwined nude bodies of Maya & Jai.”

Such demands are almost unthinkable in the U.S. But in India, where women who expose their legs in public are often subject to ridicule, censorship is as old as independence.

Under Indian law, movies should “provide clean and healthy entertainment” that is “responsible and sensitive to the values and standards of society.”

The law provides general guidelines--but few specifics--as to what is acceptable and what is not. Indian law prohibits scenes involving sexual violence against women, scenes that glorify drinking and scenes showing children as victims of sexual abuse.

But that’s as specific as it gets. Most of the rules are so broad that they can be interpreted any number of ways.

“Human sensibilities may not be offended by vulgarity, obscenity or depravity,” the law says.

Also prohibited: “scenes degrading or denigrating women in any manner.”

Government officials here defend the law and its ambiguities, arguing that, even with the imperfections, the laws are needed to protect Indian society from pornography, violence and Western decadence.

“Sex in movies [is] like drugs,” said Ira Joshi of the Ministry of Broadcasting and Information. “You see it once, and you want more and more.”

“Kama Sutra” isn’t the first movie to fall under the censors’ gaze, and it probably won’t be the last.

Each one of the roughly 700 movies produced in India each year is played before a panel of censors, made up of film professionals and lay people, that has the power to order changes.

People in the film industry complain that the panels apply the law with little consistency.

“They are completely arbitrary,” said Indu Mirani, publisher of Box Office, a film industry magazine. “I don’t know how a group of 20 people can decide what is best for a country of 950 million people.”

Indeed, Hindi-language movies often contain scenes of murder and rape. And though some foreign films are censored, others survive unscathed. In the movie “Striptease,” for instance, Demi Moore’s exposed breasts made it past the censors.

Nair suspects that the nature of the women in “Kama Sutra” may have rattled the male-dominated censorship panels. The two principal women portrayed in the film, Maya and Tara, rebel against their fates and initiate sex.

“These are not cookie-cutter women,” said Nair. “They’re complicated. They are sexually aware. They make mistakes, and they suffer for them.”

Others in the industry say that in an impoverished country like India, where millions of people perform the most personal acts in the streets where they live, censoring movies defies reality.

“In India, we are confronted daily by life in all its glories,” said Soni Razdan, an actress. “There is nothing left to the imagination.”

Nair says her movie draws on more open attitudes toward sex that once prevailed in India. The movie takes place 400 years ago. The book “Kama Sutra,” which contains graphic illustrations of sexual positions, was written in about the second century.

“When the British left, we inherited their double standards,” Nair said.

The effort to censor “Kama Sutra” is proceeding against the backdrop of a growing movement bent on preserving traditional Indian values in an era of rapid social change and economic growth.

Last month, British media chieftain Rupert Murdoch was summoned to court to hear allegations that films shown on the station he owns, Star Movies, are obscene.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which some favor to win parliamentary elections here in February, promise legislation that would impose strict censorship and content regulation on foreign-owned media.

“We are concerned about the intrusion of Western influence,” said Swaraj, the former BJP broadcast minister.

Nair says she’s confident that “Kama Sutra” will ultimately get a showing in her native country. A judge hearing her case could rule soon on whether the additional cuts demanded for the other Indian-language versions are legitimate.

Mahesh Bhatt, an Indian film director, has been watching the conflict and says he’s rooting for Nair. But he says that, however the case turns out, the censorship debate won’t end with “Kama Sutra.”

“Indian civilization is capable of saving itself,” he said. “And if it’s not, these censors are not going to do it.”