Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has taken to X with a lengthy note criticising film censorship in India, questioning why adults trusted to vote, run businesses and raise families are not trusted to decide what they watch on screen.
“If an adult is mature enough to vote for the leader of the country, raise families, run businesses, why the hell can’t they decide for themselves what to watch… An 18-year-old can choose the leader ,but needs some random committee member to decide if hearing a cuss word or watching a shot is corruptive,” he wrote. He called film censorship an “insult to the audience” and questioned the qualifications of those tasked with certifying films, adding that filmmaking is dramatic storytelling seen through a director’s lens, and that agreeing or disagreeing with it should be left to viewers.
The director pointed to Curry Barker’s Obsession, made on a reported budget of around one million dollars and now grossing upwards of three hundred million worldwide, as an example. The film released in India on May 29, roughly two weeks after its US debut, with 38 seconds of footage removed, despite crossing Rs 10 crores locally. Varma called the trims pointless given that the uncut version is a VPN search away, arguing that censorship does not erase content but instead fuels curiosity for it online. “Case in point is the head-banging scene in OBSESSION, which, after the censors cut it, must have been seen by 10 times more people on Insta reels than who actually watched the film in the theatres,” he added.
His post arrives against the backdrop of a string of recent CBFC interventions. Vijay’s Jana Nayagan was handed 12 cuts and an ‘A’ certificate, while Akshay Kumar’s Welcome To The Jungle was asked to make nearly 18 changes, including swapping the phrase “Gorkha Regiment” for a more generic line and replacing the title “General” throughout. Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar The Revenge (2026) cleared the board only after over 20 cuts, and Satluj reportedly faced 127.
Varma described the CBFC’s approach as that of a bureaucracy parenting adults who need no parenting, and urged filmmakers to stop deferring to what he called an agenda-driven system that understands neither art nor its audience. He added that in an era of borderless access to content, gatekeeping of this kind works against, rather than for, the industry.
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