A filmmaker and two censor board officials sit inside a dark theatre. On screen, a kiss unfolds. As the seconds tick by, the discomfort on the officials’ faces deepens. After coming out, the three bicker over the scene’s duration. One official suggests trimming the kiss, while the other thinks it should be cut altogether.

This is a scene from Varun Grover’s fictional short film ‘KISS’, but it mirrors reality quite closely. In recent days, India’s censor board has sparked controversy again, this time for snipping a 33-second kissing scene from the Hollywood film ‘Superman’ for being "overly sensual". Even as audiences were bewildered by the abrupt cut in a film certified for 13+ viewers, social media erupted in memes.

But things weren’t always this prudish. Let’s rewind to 1933 when a silent film titled ‘Karma’ featured a kiss that is still considered India’s longest on screen. It starred Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai, who would later establish Bombay Talkies. Some say the kiss lasted up to five minutes, but Kishwar Desai, who chronicled the moment and Rani’s life in her National Award-winning book ‘The Longest Kiss’, says the actual scene lasted under two minutes. Yet, it was ground-breaking.

“It was one of the very few kissing scenes from films that have survived from that era. But pre-Independence India was a very different country. This kiss was just treated as part of the screenplay. The fact that Devika and Himanshu were a real-life couple helped, but there were other examples of actors exchanging kisses too,” says Desai.

Much of this openness, Desai explains, had to do with the cinematic influences shaping Indian film at the time, such as Hollywood which, in the 1930s, had bold portrayals of sex and intimacy in films like ‘Unashamed’, ‘Blonde Venus’, and ‘New Morals For Old’ — a clear departure from the prudishness of the Victorian era.

Foreign technicians and directors also brought in a very different sensibility, points out Desai. “Even ‘Karma’ was made both in Hindi and English. The director, J L Freer Hunt, was a Britisher. Rai was very clear that he wanted the film to appeal to an international audience,” she adds.

Far from being an exception, such scenes were quite common in early Indian cinema, says film scholar Meraj Ahmed Mubarki, who spent months poring over archives from the 1920s. Films from that era — often starring Anglo-Indian or Parsi actors — featured prolonged kissing scenes, sensuous dances, and significant body exposure.

Patience Cooper, a leading actress of the time, appeared in multiple such films: ‘Laila Majnu’ (1922) and Bengali drama ‘Krishnakanter Will’ (1926) included scenes with the heroine’s bust exposed, while ‘Aankh Ka Nasha’ (The Witchery of the Eyes, 1928) featured a passionate kiss. The 1932 film ‘Zarina’ sparked a big controversy for including not one or two, but 86 kisses.

It's not that censors didn’t exist. The Cinematograph Act had come in 1918, and independent film censor boards were established in Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Lahore. But they were more preoccupied with politics than kissing.

In fact, the first film to be banned was ‘Bhakt Vidur’ (1921), which came just a few months after the Rowlatt Act, and featured a mythological figure modelled after Gandhi. When it came to sexuality and desire, the British were quick with cuts in American or British films, says Mubarki. “Censor committee reports show that the British were beginning to worry about how Indian audiences would react when they saw a white woman disrobing, taking a bath, sharing a drink, or kissing on screen. Films were a window to the world of the colonizer, and they had to keep it distant,” he adds.

Things started changing in the mid-thirties, both in Hollywood and at home. Monika Mehta, author of ‘Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema’, says that from the late 1930s onwards, a question began playing on the minds of filmmakers: “What is Indian culture right and how should it be defined in relation to western culture?” In trying to answer this, the film industry became a site for questions of morality and ethics, she adds.

Another factor was the film industry’s negotiation with the patriarchy. “In the context of Hollywood, a big kiss foregrounds the formation of the romantic couple. In the context of India, there was a fear that this notion of the romantic couple would unsettle the joint family system,” says Mehta.

The concerns were not just ethical, but also commercial. After Independence, the ‘family audience’ emerged as the primary moviegoing demographic, replacing the predominantly male viewers of earlier decades. Elements that could make them uncomfortable were done away with, says Desai.

“In the later films Devika Rani did with Bombay Talkies, there was no kiss. Although she was a fairly liberated woman in real life, on screen she became a saree-clad lady who is very much into family. She was playing interesting roles, but they didn’t break the mould of an ideal Indian woman,” Desai adds.

Even in film magazines, the onscreen kiss became a topic of discussion. In the April 1940 edition of FilmIndia, for instance, a reader asked the editor: “Indian films use a duet to express love. Don't you think they would do well to use a kiss instead?”

The magazine’s editor Baburao Patel, famous for his caustic language, replied, “Yes, a kiss would be the shortest cut which perhaps the audience would also like, if it is passionately given. But what about the literary bile of the dialogue writer who wants to spit out love through the painted lips in the shape of senseless words? Then there are the Censor Boards with their unromantic inspectors and tired fossils as members of the Boards. Won't they fall to pieces if they see a good long-winded kiss on the screen?”

After Independence, autonomous regional censors were merged — first into the Bombay Board of Film Censors, and then reorganized as the Central Board of Film Censors in 1952. Films like ‘Karma’ gave way to nationalist and mythological offerings, which showed women as caregivers or upholders of chaste, family values. “After the turbulence of Partition, the film industry had to come back with an Indian image, which was very carefully crafted,” Desai says.

In this new image, overt depictions of desire gave way to more symbolic expressions such as two flowers coming together or a pair of feet peeking out from under a blanket. When some films tried to move away from that, like ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ in 1978, huge controversies erupted. In its coverage of the Zeenat Aman-starrer, The New York Times wrote, “In a sharp break with the tradition of modesty, the kiss has come to the Hindi motion picture screen, titillating some film audiences, scandalizing others, and fuelling a national debate over censorship.”

Decades later, the kiss keeps getting caught in the censor’s crosshairs.