National Becoming, Regional Variation and Everyday Moments: the Film Enquiry Committee, Uttar Pradesh and the Student Cinema-Goer

Abstract

This chapter suggests that the Film Enquiry Committee approached cinema primarily through its regulatory frameworks rather than through serious thought about the form or content of films. It argues that the imagined unitary national space for Indian film to be coordinated and supported by a central Film Council represented a utopian project for cinema, one in which audiences would be disciplined and the market for films uniform. The chapter addresses this smoothing of national space by examining the Film Enquiry Committee’s excursions in the United Provinces/Uttar Pradesh (UP). Correspondence between the Film Enquiry Committee and members of the UP state government yields a particularly interesting perspective on regional variation in censorship practice. While the Film Enquiry Committee of 1949-1951 sought to focus on cinema as a part of national culture and industry, the UP state government construed the regimentation of a central government determined to create a national space for Indian cinema as ‘fraught with dangers’. © 2016 Arvind Rajagopal and Anupama Rao.