CBFC Double Standard or Discretion The Real Test of India’s New Film Guidelines
A kiss can lose a few seconds. A film about caste, police violence, or political power can lose years.
That is the sharpest way to read the recent argument around the Central Board of Film Certification, or CBFC. In July 2025, kiss scenes in Hollywood’s Superman were trimmed for Indian cinemas after being treated as “overly sensual”. Two weeks later, a kiss in the Hindi romance Saiyaara was cut too. At the same time, Animal, criticised by many reviewers for glorifying misogyny and brutal violence, had already reached theatres with an adult certificate.
That contrast has fed a familiar charge: the CBFC is stricter about sexuality than violence, and far stricter about some social subjects than others. Critics call it a double standard. The Board’s rulebook points to a more complicated problem.
The guidelines notified under the Cinematograph Act, and retained almost word for word in the revised version issued on 16 September 2026, already say that violence and anti-social behaviour must not be glorified or justified. They also say scenes of sexual violence should be minimised. On paper, the CBFC has the tools to deal with both sexual content and violent content.
The gap lies in judgement. Words such as glorification, justification, decency, and public order do not apply themselves. Examining committees apply them. Revising committees apply them. Courts may later review them. Different people can read the same scene and reach different conclusions.
This is a policy analysis, not legal advice. Its focus is the public test created by recent certification decisions: will India’s new film guidelines protect audiences from harm, or will they protect preferred narratives from scrutiny?
The rulebook already recognises the problem of glorified violence
The popular debate often treats the CBFC’s standards as if they are silent on violent or misogynistic content. They are not.
The guidelines under the Cinematograph Act have long required certification decisions to consider the impact of cinematic material on public order, decency, morality, and the sovereignty and integrity of India. The revised guidelines issued on 16 September 2026 retained the central logic. They continue to state that certain forms of violence and anti-social conduct should not be presented in a way that glorifies, justifies, or encourages them.
They also address sexual violence. The guidelines say such content should be minimised, and that the presentation of women must avoid degrading or denigrating treatment. In other words, the rulebook does not only ask whether a film has sex, nudity, or intimate scenes. It also asks how violence, abuse, and power are framed.
That matters because the public argument around Animal did not turn on whether violent acts appeared on screen. Adult-rated cinema can contain disturbing material. The sharper question was whether the film’s style, music, framing, and character treatment made brutality and misogyny look heroic, desirable, or excusable.
That is where the test becomes hard.
A regulator can count swear words. It can time a kiss. It can identify a shot of bloodshed. It can mark an intimate scene as “overly sensual”. These are visible units of content.
Glorification is different. It asks how a film wants the viewer to feel.
Does the film condemn the violent character, or build a cult around him? Does the narrative show consequences, or convert domination into swagger? Does the camera expose misogyny, or invite admiration for it? Does the soundtrack mock brutality, mourn it, or celebrate it?
These are interpretive questions. They are also exactly the questions the guidelines require committees to answer.
This explains why the phrase CBFC censorship India, film certification double standard, Santosh film CBFC, Phule film cuts, Cinematograph Act guidelines 2026 now sits at the centre of the debate. The legal language exists. The controversy is over how consistently that language is used.
Certification turns on discretion as much as doctrine
The CBFC does not act through one all-knowing official watching every film in the same room, with the same mood, the same politics, and the same instincts. Certification depends on committees.
A film can be examined, referred, revised, challenged, or delayed. In practice, that creates room for variance. One committee may read a scene as contextual. Another may call it provocative. One may see a caste term as historical truth. Another may see it as a public-order risk. One may accept violence as part of an adult film. Another may see a kiss as excessive even in a romance.
This is not unique to India. Film ratings and classification systems across the world depend on judgement. What makes India’s system more contested is that certification is not only about age suitability. The CBFC can require cuts or changes before public exhibition. That makes it both a classifier and, in effect, a gatekeeper.
The distinction is crucial.
A ratings body can say, “This film is for adults.” A censorial system can say, “This film cannot reach adults unless it first removes or alters material.”
India’s regime sits in the second category. The Board may grant certificates such as U, U/A, A, or refuse certification. It may also seek excisions, audio mutes, disclaimers, substitutions, or alterations. The statutory frame includes grounds such as public order, decency, morality, defamation, contempt of court, and national security.
Those grounds are broad. Broad grounds create a larger interpretive field. That is why two films with superficially similar content can receive different treatment. The official explanation may rest on context, intensity, target audience, tone, narrative impact, or social conditions. But to the filmmaker and the public, the difference can look arbitrary.
The July 2025 kiss cuts sharpened this perception. If a kiss in Superman and a kiss in Saiyaara are treated as threats to decency, while stylised male rage and graphic violence pass with an adult certificate, the Board appears more anxious about desire than domination.
That impression may be incomplete. The CBFC can argue that an adult certificate is an appropriate tool for violent adult content, while sexual imagery often triggers different threshold concerns in Indian certification culture. Yet the rulebook itself does not rank all sensuality above all violence. It asks about effect, context, and social harm.
Once the Board invokes discretion, it inherits a duty to explain it.
Films about power face the most expensive scrutiny
The deeper concern is not only about kisses and violent men. It is about films that name power.
Recent certification disputes suggest that works dealing with caste, state violence, police conduct, and political histories can face forms of scrutiny that go well beyond seconds of trimming. These cases do not all follow the same facts. They do, though, create a pattern worth measuring.
Film | Subject matter | Reported certification issue | What the case shows |
Santosh | Police drama involving caste, misogyny, and custodial violence | Denied certification in India | Films about institutions can face high scrutiny even after international recognition |
Phule | Biopic of anti-caste reformers Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule | Lost caste terms such as Mahar and Mang | Historical vocabulary can become a certification flashpoint |
Dhadak 2 | Romance between a Dalit man and a dominant-caste woman | Accepted 16 cuts | Caste in mainstream romance can trigger detailed intervention |
Homebound | Social drama connected to marginalised lives | Reported cuts | Social realism can be vulnerable when identity and exclusion are central |
Punjab ’95 | Film linked to the life and death of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra | Reportedly faced 127 requested cuts and a wait of more than three years | Political violence and state accountability can turn certification into a long contest |
The small cuts and the long delays are not the same kind of burden.
A kiss cut removes seconds. A delayed certificate can remove a film from public life for a season, a festival cycle, an awards window, a distribution deal, or a moment of public relevance. A film that waits years is not merely “under review”. It is commercially and politically suspended.
That is why Santosh matters. The film, a police drama about caste, misogyny, and custodial violence, was selected as the United Kingdom’s Oscar entry. Yet it was denied certification in India. A film can circulate internationally as serious cinema while being blocked from exhibition in the country whose social realities it engages.
The CBFC may have its reasons. Public order, representation of police, communal or caste sensitivities, or other statutory concerns may have been considered. The point is not that every difficult film must be certified without question. The point is that denial requires a standard that the public can understand.
Phule raises a different but linked problem. A biopic of anti-caste reformers Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule cannot be separated from caste vocabulary. Terms such as Mahar and Mang are not decorative. They are part of social history, humiliation, resistance, and reform. Removing such terms may reduce immediate discomfort, but it can also flatten the very injustice the film seeks to represent.
With Dhadak 2, the question becomes even more mainstream. A love story between a Dalit man and a dominant-caste woman places caste not in a distant historical frame but inside romance, family, and social hierarchy. The acceptance of 16 cuts suggests a negotiated release rather than a ban. Yet even negotiated cuts matter when the subject is caste power. Each change can shift the audience’s understanding of who holds authority, who faces danger, and what kind of love society polices.
Punjab ’95 sits at the heavy end of the spectrum. Reported demands for 127 cuts and a wait of more than three years describe not a routine age-classification process but a prolonged struggle over narrative permission. When a film deals with enforced disappearance, human rights claims, or state violence, certification can become a proxy battle over public memory.
The pattern is not that every film about oppression is banned. The pattern is that some subjects carry higher certification risk, longer timelines, and more intrusive demands.
Public order is a real ground, but it can swallow the story
The strongest defence of CBFC intervention is not moral panic. It is law.
The Board works within statutory grounds. Public order, decency, morality, and related concerns are not inventions of an individual committee. They come from the legal framework governing public exhibition. India’s courts have also intervened in film exhibition even after CBFC clearance. The Kerala High Court, for instance, has halted a CBFC-cleared film over public-order concerns. That shows scrutiny can cut in more than one direction.
This point matters for accuracy. The CBFC is not always the final word. A certificate does not fully protect a film from litigation, protests, state-level pressure, or judicial restraint. A refusal or demanded cut is also not always the end of the road, because boards and courts can be challenged.
Still, public order is a difficult ground in film regulation because it can move the burden from the potential disruptor to the filmmaker.
If a film names caste violence, and some groups threaten unrest, who should be restrained? The film, because it may disturb peace? Or the groups using disruption to control speech?
If a film depicts custodial violence, does that undermine public faith in institutions? Or does suppressing the depiction reduce accountability?
If a biopic uses historically accurate caste terms, does that risk offence? Or does removing those words sanitise history?
These are not abstract questions. They decide what Indian audiences are trusted to watch.
Public order has legitimate uses. A film that directly incites violence against a community, spreads dangerous falsehoods, or encourages targeted harm may raise serious legal concerns. But many contested films do something different. They dramatise the existence of injustice. They show cruelty, discrimination, abuse, or state failure. The discomfort comes not from incitement but from recognition.
That is where the CBFC’s discretion needs tighter discipline.
A useful standard would ask several questions before restricting a film on public-order grounds:
Is the feared harm specific, or only speculative?
Does the film incite harm, or depict harm?
Does the scene endorse prejudice, or expose it?
Is the cut narrowly linked to the risk?
Would an age rating, warning, or contextual disclaimer be enough?
Is the restriction punishing the filmmaker for the likely reaction of others?
When these questions are not answered publicly, certification decisions can look like preference rather than policy.
The kiss test exposes a cultural hierarchy
The kiss cuts in Superman and Saiyaara are minor in runtime, but large in symbolism.
They show how quickly Indian film regulation still notices visible sensuality. Kissing is easy to identify. It has a start point and an end point. It can be trimmed without rewriting the plot. For a committee, it is a clean intervention.
Violence is harder. Brutality may be distributed across dialogue, staging, music, lighting, character construction, and audience alignment. A film can pass through a committee because no single shot crosses a threshold, even if the total effect celebrates domination.
This gives sensuality a regulatory disadvantage. It appears as content. Violence often appears as tone.
That distinction can create a distorted certification culture:
Visible material | Usually easier to regulate | Harder question often left behind |
A kiss | Duration and camera angle | Whether adult audiences need protection from consensual intimacy |
A swear word | Specific audio mute | Whether language reflects social reality |
Bloodshed | Shot intensity | Whether violence is condemned or glamorised |
Caste language | Specific term removal | Whether history can be told without naming caste |
Police brutality | Scene-level assessment | Whether state violence can be criticised on screen |
The problem is not that intimate scenes should never be classified. Age ratings serve a real purpose. Children do not need unrestricted access to adult material. Parents may want reliable information. Filmmakers benefit from a clear certification category that signals audience suitability.
The problem appears when consensual adult intimacy is treated as more dangerous than stylised cruelty, or when naming oppression is treated as more disruptive than depicting domination.
This is where the Board’s guidelines on glorification should matter more. If the law says violence and anti-social conduct must not be glorified, committees need a consistent method to assess glorification. That method cannot rest only on the presence of gore. It must examine framing.
Five indicators would help:
Narrative consequence
Does the film impose moral, emotional, legal, or social consequences for violence? Or does it reward brutality with admiration and romantic success?
Camera alignment
Does the camera place viewers with the victim, the perpetrator, or a cheering crowd? A scene can show violence while refusing to celebrate it.
Music and style
Does the sound design mourn, unsettle, or excite? A heroic score under cruelty can change the meaning of the same action.
Victim agency
Are harmed characters treated as full people, or as props in the protagonist’s rise?
Pattern across the film
One troubling scene may be critique. Repeated celebration can become endorsement.
These factors will not remove judgement. They would make judgement more visible.
The 2026 guidelines will be judged by outcomes, not wording
The revised guidelines issued on 16 September 2026 did not solve the core dispute because the core dispute was never only textual. The older framework already contained language against glorified violence and degrading representation. The revised version retained much of that structure.
The real test is operational.
Do different examining committees apply the same principles in comparable cases? Are reasons clear enough for filmmakers to respond? Are cuts narrow and necessary? Are adult certificates used where adult classification is sufficient? Are delays tracked and justified? Are politically sensitive films treated with the same confidence in audiences as commercially violent films?
These questions can be answered only through practice.
Better transparency would not require the CBFC to publish every internal exchange in real time. It could begin with more structured reasons in disputed cases. When the Board asks for cuts, it can identify the precise guideline, the exact risk, and the reason a rating or disclaimer would not suffice. When it denies certification, it can explain why less restrictive options failed.
That would help filmmakers. It would also help the Board.
At present, vague discretion exposes the CBFC to the charge of inconsistency even when a committee may have acted in good faith. A clear paper trail would make it easier to distinguish legal reasoning from cultural anxiety, and genuine public-order concerns from anticipated political pressure.
A more consistent system would also recognise that adult viewers are not children with voter cards. If a film is fit only for adults, the adult certificate should carry real weight. The Board should still intervene when content crosses legal lines. But if the concern is discomfort, offence, or disagreement with a film’s politics, classification should be preferred over excision.
The difference is democratic. Certification informs choice. Censorship narrows it.
The real divide is between protecting viewers and protecting narratives
The CBFC’s defenders can make a serious case. India is a large, diverse, unequal, and politically charged society. Films travel quickly. Stars carry influence. A reckless depiction can inflame prejudice, normalise cruelty, or exploit sexual violence. Certification is not absurd in such a context.
But the critics also have a serious case. A regulator that trims kisses, negotiates caste vocabulary, blocks police dramas, and lets stylised cruelty pass with adult labelling invites scrutiny. It appears to draw sharper lines around sensuality and social critique than around aggression and domination.
The answer is not to abandon all standards. The answer is to apply standards in a way that can be checked.
Three principles would move the system closer to that goal.
Use adult ratings before cuts wherever possible.
If a problem can be solved by restricting viewership to adults, that should usually be the first remedy.
Treat context as evidence, not a slogan.
Committees often rely on context, but they should state what context changes. A scene that exposes caste abuse is not the same as a scene that endorses caste abuse.
Measure delay as a censorship cost.
A film held for years has been burdened even if it is later released. Time should count in any assessment of certification fairness.
The line from the recent cases is plain. A kiss may cost seconds. A film about caste, police brutality, or state power may lose words, scenes, release windows, or years. That difference may sometimes have legal justification. It should never be allowed to hide behind unexplained discretion.
The new guidelines will not be judged by their promise to protect audiences. They will be judged by what they protect audiences from. Adult content is one thing. Historical memory, caste reality, institutional violence, and political accountability are another.
If certification shields viewers from harm, it performs a public function. If it shields power from being named, it becomes a narrative filter. That is the real test of India’s new film guidelines.
