Subhash K Jha (DNA; November 27, 2015)

The Indian Censor Board has competition from unexpected quarters: their conservative British counterparts. In the line of fire is Kamal Haasan’s new thriller Thoongavanam that has been granted a 15 certification by the British Censor Board. And that, too, only after the huge action sequence between Kamal Haasan and his leading lady Trisha was toned down.

Says Kamal Haasan, “It was very surprising. The Indian Censor Board had no objection to my taking on Trisha man-to-man…or man-to-woman in a one-to-one combat.”

For those who came in late, Kamal Haasan plays an undercover cop doing a drug deal with a night club owner in the film. Trisha plays a colleague from the police department who trails the hero and challenges him to a fight to the finish.

Says Kamal, “We didn’t want to make it a fight between the two sexes. It was a combat of two colleagues opposed to one another. The fact that Trisha was a woman was of no consequence to the fight between them. In a sense, she asked for it because she starts the fight.” Regrettably, the British Censor Board didn’t see it that way. “They had very strong objections to a man taking on a woman in a hand-combat, although we’ve seen such fights in many Hollywood and British films.”

The Board finally granted Thoongavanam a ‘15’ certification which means children under 15 couldn’t see it. “Strangely, the Indian Censor Board had no problems with the fight between Trisha and me,” says Kamal, and adds there is a lot that needs to be changed with the Indian Censor Board.

“In Chennai, every filmmaker aspires to get a ‘U’ certificate because that makes films eligible for governmental concession. They try to hoodwink the audience by showing air fornication in songs rather than the real thing. Unless filmmakers stop trying to circumvent censorial rules, the Censor Board would continue to be a censoring rather than a certification organisation.”