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As masses of people engage in discussions on state reform, we must remember that simply changing the individuals in certain roles and positions means changing the managers of the state while keeping the old state apparatus intact. Abolishing the Censor Board has shown that radical steps can be taken, writes Sarah Nafisa Shahid

THE interim government just announced that Bangladesh’s Film Censor Board will be discarded and turned into a Certification Board. This is a huge relief for those of us who have been vocal against all kinds of censorship not only during the Awami League regime but even prior. This decision, while long overdue, is a significant one as it acknowledges the irrelevance ofÌýcolonial institutions like the Censor Board in our post-July Uprising reality and similar steps must be taken in other sectors as well.Ìý

Bangladesh’s Film Censor Board was a colonial legacy whose role throughout history has been to control culture and suppress opposition for the benefit of the state. It was created in 1918 by the British Raj ‘to prevent the exhibition of objectionable films.’ The first film banned by the British imperial government was Bhakta Vidur in 1921 where the protagonist was depicted wearing the cap in the fashion of Mahatma Gandhi. During Pakistani dictator Ayub Khan’s regime in 1952, the East Bengal Censor Board banned Bengali filmmaker Zahir Raihan’s Jibon Theke Neya. Raihan’s film was critical of Pakistani rule and upheld the emerging revolutionary spirit of the people in then-East Pakistan.

After the Liberation War in 1971, there was an opportunity to get rid of this archaic notion of a Censor Board. But as a new nation state of Bangladesh emerged, consequent ruling classes adapted the oppressive state apparatus of its colonial predecessors.Ìý

For many years, filmmakers in Bangladesh have cited the Censor Board as a key reason for not being able to produce quality, thought-provoking mass cinema. In the absence of which, Hindi-language Indian mass cinema has filled that void. But even in India, filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj, Chaitanya Tamhane, Rima Das, and others have been able to challenge their own state narratives and engage in new types of cultural dialogue with mass audiences. The opportunity to engage mass audiences in understanding and challenging state narratives is a privilege that has been denied to filmmakers in Bangladesh for decades.Ìý

Few days after the Hasina government fell, an open-air public screening was organised of the banned film Mor Thengari (My Bicycle) by Aung Rakhine, an indigenous filmmaker. The film is set in Chittagong Hill Tracts and explores the language, culture, and politics of the Chakma community who are regularly subjected to surveillance, displacement, and oppression by the Bangladesh Army. To me, this screening embodied the hard-fought freedom and spirit of the July Uprising where any sort of state or military violence can and must be challenged whether on the streets or on the screen.Ìý

The recent violence allegedly by Bengali settlers against our Adivasi siblings in Khagrachori and Rangamati stresses the urgency of using cinema and culture as a site of resistance and a site of rejecting hegemonic Bengali nationalism. It also reminded me that the Censor Board is only one of many institutions that we have inherited from our colonial predecessors. There are many others, including the police force and the military.Ìý

As masses of people engage in discussions on state reform, we must remember that simply changing the individuals in certain roles and positions means changing the managers of the state while keeping the old state apparatus intact. Abolishing the Censor Board has shown that radical steps can be taken. In fact, now is the time to do it.

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Sarah Nafisa Shahid is a Bangladeshi writer and labour activist based in Toronto, Canada. She has written extensively on cinema, culture, and politics in NOW magazine, Hyperallergic, Spring Magazine, and The Daily Star.