CBFC CUTS MUST GUIDE, NOT DICTATE CONTENT

IN India, and especially in Tamil Nadu, politics and cinema are deeply intertwined.

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Films often do far more than entertain: they shape public opinion, provoke debate and, in several instances, have launched political careers. That is why the recent certification controversies surrounding Vijay's Jana Nayagan and Sivakarthikeyan's Parasakthi feel larger than isolated disputes. They point to deeper anxieties about who controls narratives and when. The unusually strong reaction of the CBFC-delayed certification for Jana Nayagan owing to late-surfacing objections, and extensive cuts suggested for Parasakthi-stands out. Critics argue that a body meant to certify films increasingly appears to exercise wide discretionary powers, leaving filmmakers uncertain about boundaries and treating audiences as incapable of fo