Pahlaj Nihalani resurfaces, wonders why filmmakers aren’t targeting the CBFC anymore: ‘I was misunderstood’

Former CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani has said that he was attacked unjustly during his controversial tenure, and that he was simply doing his job.

Ousted former chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), Pahlaj Nihalani, has said that he was only following established guidelines during his controversial tenure at the helm of the censor board. Nihalani was removed from his position in 2017, and replaced by lyricist Prasoon Joshi.

Pahlaj Nihalani presided over a controversial phase in the CBFC’s history.

In an interview, he demanded to know why the same sort of attacks that he had faced during his tenure weren’t being levelled against the new management.

“You cannot show what you want. I was telling them about the rule,” he told Times Now. “I was making the noise, as the right picture should be shown. We have allowed foul language, but you cannot spoil the character. I had opposed obscenity, nudity and the use of abusive language, but the same system and guideline is there. In my tenure, people were targeting me more than CBFC. Why they are not targeting now?”

Nihalani said that he wasn’t being partial and that he was ‘misunderstood’. “Content makers wanted me to go, so that there could be a green signal. It was marketed that way,” he said. Painting himself as some sort of saviour, he added, “If nobody is opposing you, how will you carry the light? You have to take the criticism, to understand the right and wrong. I have understood people’s mind and whatever I did was not out of personal enmity...”

Nihalani, who earned the epithet of ‘Sanskari Nihalani’, was slammed for compelling filmmakers to edit, mute and shorten dialogues and scenes which he found unfit for universal viewing. Some of the films that suffered under his tenure were Udta Punjab, Skyfall, and Babumoshai Bandookbaaz.

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