Shekhar Kapur questions censoring of Padmavati

Ace director says Bhansali is not a political filmmaker

Shekhar Kapur

Ace director Shekhar Kapur on Sunday questioned the censoring of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati, saying while Mr. Bhansali was a “great” filmmaker, he was never a political one.

“I know the filmmaker. I know the film and you [too] know the film. The intention of the filmmaker was not to create a storm, create a controversy. He is a great filmmaker, but he has never been a political filmmaker,” Mr. Kapur said. He was speaking at the session Masterclass at the International Film Festival of India here.

“There are fractured lines in our society that are obvious because India, as a society, is in an absolute and desperate flux,” Mr. Kapur said, putting in context the controversy surrounding

Padmavati .

‘Interpretation of facts’

“All the fractured lines, which were drawn once, are breaking, and, in the breaking of those lines, there are fractures. So the politics that has risen around the film, and not in the film. Why censor the poor filmmaker. It was not his intention,” Mr. Kapur said.

Replying to a question on historical films and narrating his own experiences during the making of

Elizabeth , Mr. Kapur said that history was a constant interpretation of facts.

“I am not saying it is wrong. This is how history works. In India, till the British came, we believed in mythology, not in history,” he said.

"What’s our history? Gandhiji today is a saint for us. He’s not a man, he is a Mahatma with an halo around his head. The sense of history in India is a moral tale, it’s not a factual one. Moral tales are interpreted to make it relevant to the present,” said Mr. Kapur.