Rajkumar Gupta Confirms Removal Of Controversial Religious References

We are living through volatile  dangerous  and touchy times when  one never knows what would end up offending one or the other section of the audience.

  No wonder  the  CBFC has religious  experts on board  to deal with  any  religious references in  films.

And it is now verified  , to this writer, from the  director  himself, that  his on-release eagerly  awaited  thriller-dramaIndia’s Most Wanted  has indeed  undergone censorial intervention in one  sequence where the  Holy Quran and theBhagvat Gita are spoken of in  the same breath.

According to reliable  sources in  the censor board, the fusion of religious sentiments  caused alarm bells to  go off in the censorboard members’ collective heads.

One  censorboard member told me, “We honestly had no problem with the  film and its message and dialogues.  RajKumar  Gupta has made  a hardhitting raw and real  film on anti-terrorism. At one  point there is a reference  to the two religious  texts which we  thought would make audiences uncomfortable and even  incite a section to  protest. I mean Mandir-Masjid  bhai-bhai is  fine in principle. But  in reality you can’t mix the two religious identities.”

 When  I contacted  the very  dedicated  director Rajkumar Gupta he said, “They thought it will hurt the religious sentiments of people. So they asked us to remove it and we also didn’t want to hurt anybody religious sentiment so we removed it.It’s a simple as  that.  Why would we want any trouble?”

Gupta is no stranger  to amicable censorial  intervention. His controversial  second feature film No One  Killed Jessica about the real-life killing  of   Jessica Lal was given an ‘A’ certificate  without cuts.