Censor Board Chief Pahlaj Nihalani to be sacked for making 'Modi Kaka' video?
If reports are to be believed, the official announcement of Nihalani's exit will be made soon...
Censor Board has been mired in controversies for over a year now. After Pahlaj Nihalani became the new Censor Board chief, matter only turned from bad to worse for all filmmakers. The director who has himself directed a lot of films replete with sexual songs and sexual innuendos has recently been in news for chopping off a kissing scene in the latest James Bond film Spectre. Now we hear that Pahlaj Nihalani might lose his job.
Reports claim that the Censor Board chief will soon be shown the door. Reason? Not because of his censoring antics. But the decision to oust him has been taken after he made the video tribute to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Given his extreme love for all things Modi, this video dedicated to the PM wasn’t very surprising. But the quality of the song 'Mera Desh Hai Mahan' has put it firmly in the ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ variety. It’s not just that the video has stereotyped religious imagery and bad CGI and looks like rather shabbily made propaganda, a claim denied by Nihalani who was quoted by Catch News as saying: “The song doesn't glorify anybody except the nation. It says 'Bharat ko Swachh banana hai, Jo Sapna dekha Bapu, Modi ne, Usse mil-jul kar Humein Sach kar Dikhana Hai'. So it talks about how we all should come together and work towards the betterment of the nation.”
But production values aside, the video also takes the extreme liberty of juxtaposing several non-Indian images from across the world, as Twitter user @sandygrains pointed out. These included an expressway construction in Dubai, the Moscow International Business Centre, Japan's HTV-3 exiting the International Space Station, Nasa's space shuttle (without the logo), the Tour de France and the Make In India lion on the International Space Station.
On grounds of severe embarrassment that the video has caused to the government, Pahlaj will be removed from his position. But the official announcements haven't been made yet. They can be expected soon. We won't be surprised if we found people smiling in the corridors of Bollywood already.