ABSTRACT
This research paper gives clear information about what is the term called secularism is. And also, this paper analyses the freedoms given to an Indian cinema under the article 19, article 25, article 26, article 27 and article 28. And also, the paper analyses the topic secularism and Indian cinema in the light of the above-mentioned articles. And also, the paper talks about on what is influencing people to make these type of unsecular movies and analyses why these types of movies are coming and what is influencing the movie makers to do these types of movies. And also, information about what is secularism in India and how is it influencing people. And how secularism works in India. And also, about whether the religious backgrounds of directors and story writers of the movies affect the movies or there are any other factors which affect the movies. And also, the impacts of cinema towards the society, and society towards the society. And this paper also discusses about the unsecular movies and it also gives solution to stop these types of unsecular movies. And the paper also deals with some sections of the Cinematograph act 1952.
KEYWORDS: Secularism, Indian Cinema, article, society, directors, story writers, unsecular, cinematograph act, section.
INTRODUCTION:
Secularism in brief means the principle of separation of the state from religious institutions. And in secular countries no religion will be considered as national or no country will be given the status of national religion to consider a state or a country to be secular it should not support any religion and the country or a state should not be based on any religion. And the state or country should not be biased and, the state or a country should maintain equality between all the religion for it to be considered as secular. This is what secularism in brief mean. And the article 19 talks about the Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech etc. , under this article the citizens of the country get the right of freedom of speech and expression , article 25 talks about Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion ,under this article citizens of the country are free to profess propagate and practice their own religion article 26 talks about Freedom to manage religious affairs, under this article citizens are free to or they will get the rights1 manage their religious affairs like maintaining institutions of their own religion article 27 talks about Freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion, under this article the citizens are free from paying taxes for the promotion of their religions and article 28 talks about Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions, under this article citizens can attend any religious instructions or any religious worships of their respective religions.[1] This is about the brief introduction.
ANALYSIS:
Secularism means a country or a state can be considered secular when it gives equal importance to all the religions in the country and also the country or a state should maintain equality between all the religions the state should not be biased towards only one religion.[2] And when we talk about the article 19 of the constitution it states that all the citizens of the country have the right to freedom of speech and expression to practice any profession so when it comes to direction as the director is a citizen of the country he has all the right to express and his own thoughts in his movies but in an article it was said that freedom of speech is a fundamental right guaranteed to the citizens under article 19 this fundamental right is expanded in order to include a filmmaker’s right to express their thoughts and ideas through their films the filmmakers expression through their films can be restricted when they are unsecular and when the thoughts of the filmmakers violates the Indian constitution. In order to restrict this from happening the cinematograph rules and cinematograph Act 1952 provided parameters and process for censorship of films and it grants certification which says whether the public can watch the movie or not. And article 25 ,talks about Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion article 26, talks about Freedom to manage religious affairs, article 27 talks about Freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion and article 28 talks about Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain educational institutions under these articles freedom has been given to citizens by the constitution in order to practice , profess and propagate their religion and also they have all the rights to manage their religious affairs and under these the citizens need not pay any taxes or are free from paying taxes for the promotion of their religion .
Mainly these articles are drafted in order to maintain the secularism in the country and in order to maintain equality between all the religions so when we talk about this aspect in the movies the directors of the movies have all the rights in order to present their thoughts about their religion in their respective movies and they can also promote and they have all the rights in order to promote their religion and also, they have the right to attend the religious worships. So even the directors of the movies are citizens of the country and they have all the right to promote their religion through their movies so according to these articles’ freedom is given to Indian directors in order to bring out these types of secular movies So, under these articles full freedom has been given by the constitution to make these types of secular movies. So, these types of secular movies can be made by the directors.[3]
And when we talk about unsecular movies. These are the movies which are against secularism in unsecular movies only one religion upheld in order to degrade other religions. The filmmakers enormous love towards their own religion will be shown in their movies and in the process of upholding their religion they start degrading other religions. So, in a movie when other religions are degraded in order to upheld some other religion these types of movies are called unsecular movies and these types of movies are against secularism and secularism is one of the aspects of the basic structure of the constitution. When we talk about what is influencing people to do these type unsecular movies. The directors of the film feel that their respective religion more better than other religions because all the people have that one feeling that their religion is more better than the other and in order to show that their religion is better these type of directors bring out unsecular movies in which only one religion will be upheld and in these type of movies the directors try to show how better their religion is and the main reason behind these type of movies are the directors and the story writers and no other factors affect that affect movies because the director and the story writer are the once who put base to any movie and it is the same in these type of movies also . So, the reason behind these types of movies are mainly the story writers and then comes the directors and their enormous love towards their religion after the film starts all the technicians will anyway contribute to the movie. And when we talk about how these type of movies influences the society movies are one of the best entertainments for the people in society majority of the population watch movies in society. So, when they watch these types of unsecular movies, they feel that their religion is great and feel that other religions are harmful to the country and a person who watches the same movie who belongs to other religion he feels that his religion is great and he starts hating the religion which is upheld in the movie so when people watch these types of unsecular movies this leads to religious conflicts and in return it affects the unity. People may have unity in their respective religions but it is a waste if we don’t have unity as a country so it is very important to maintain unity in a country so when these types of religious conflicts come there won’t be any sort of unity in the and we have a country fail to maintain unity. And when we talk about how society influences the cinema the directors write the story according to the present or on-going trend so this is how the society influences cinema and the directors start praising the religions who have majority of the population so that the majority population will watch the movie and the producer can easily make profits. So, this is how the society influences the movie.
So in order to stop these type of unsecular movies which are a threat to the national unity and which lead to religious conflicts the solution to stop these type of unsecular movies is article 19 , article 25 , article 26, article 27 and article 28 of the Indian constitution gives all the rights to practice , profess and propagate their own religion and also the Indian constitution as given freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of religions but what people should be aware is the articles of constitution provides and gives rights to citizens to only propagate , practice and profess their religion but there is no right given to people to degrade other religions in the process of practicing and upholding their own religion.[4] Degrading other religions in order to upheld their own religion violates the constitution of India so the constitution provides rights only to practice, propagate and promote their own religion but it does not give rights to proper to degrade any other religion in the process of promoting, practicing and propagating their own religion .So people are given rights only to practice , promote and propagate their own religion they have no rights to degrade other religions in the process of upholding their own religion so in secular movies this is what happens the directors in the process of upholding their own religion they degrade other religions and degrading other religions in the process of upholding one particular religion is against the Indian constitution because it is against secularism and secularism is an aspect under the basic structure and these type of movies directly violates the basic structure of the constitution because it is unsecular . So the people have rights only to practice , profess and promote their religion and they have no right degrade other religion in the process of uphelding their own religion so the articles of the constitution gives rights only to practice , profess and propagate their own religion and there are no rights given to the people by the constitution to degrade any other religion in the process of uphelding their own religion and the degradation of other religions is unsecular and it will directly violates the basic structure of the Indian constitution . And according the article 19,article 25,article 26,article 27, and article 28 the directors of movies have all the rights to express their thoughts about their religion through movies but they do not have any rights to degrade other religions while they are upholding their own religion and while they are expressing their own thoughts through their movies so if directors degrade other religions in their movies they are violating the Indian constitution and the basic structure of the Indian constitution so no religion should be degraded in any movies . Directors can only uphold their own religion but they cannot degrade any ither religions through their movies
And one more solution to stop these types of unsecular movies is The Cinematograph act this act was introduced mainly for the certification of the movies. This act provides provisions for the certification of films for exhibition. This act provides certificates for the films and it declares whether a film is eligible for public exhibition. Any film can be released in theaters only after the censor board under this act approves for the public exhibition and this act does not allow any film which are against the law to be released and the censor board advices the movie makers to alter or to delete the scenes which violates the law and after the alterations the movie will be checked by the censor board once again and only then the films will be allowed to release if the alterations are made as per the suggestions. So, the censor board under this act plays a very important role under this act. Section 3 of the cinematograph act 1952 gives powers to central government to constitute a board of film censors and the board should consist number of persons as may be prescribed for the purpose of certifying and examining films suitable for the public exhibition. And Section 4 of the cinematograph act talks about the examination of the films for censor under this section the films will be examine and the board gives sanction whether the films are eligible for public exhibition so under this section even unsecular movies should not be given sanctions for release the board should not be given sanction to even unsecular movies and the censor board should take strict actions against unsecular movies and these type of movies should not be allowed for the public exhibition.[5] And the films under cinematograph act can be released only after the films are certified by the board of film censors.
CONCLUSION:
This paper discusses about what is the term secularism in brief and discusses about the freedoms given under article19, article 25 , article 26 ,article 27 and article 28 of the constitution and also it discusses about why these types of movies are coming and discusses about who are the main reason behind these types of movies and also discusses about how these types of movies are influencing the society and about how the society is influencing these type of movies and also the paper discusses about the term unsecular films and the explains what is unsecular films and also the paper discusses about the cinematograph act 1952 and the paper discusses about section 3 and section 4 of the act briefly and it discusses about the censor board and censor of the films and the certification of the films and the paper also provides solution to stop these unsecular movies these are some of the aspects which are discussed in the above mentioned research paper.
BIBLOGRAPHY:
ARTICLES:
Indian secularism: is it a way communalism? By: Prashant Amrutkar
Communalism, secularism and Indian historical films By: Urvil mukhopadhyay
WEBSITES:
www.jstor.com
STATUTES:
The Constitution of India.
The Cinematograph Act, 1952.
[1] INDIA CONST.art19,art25.art26,art27,art28,cl.2.
[2] Prashant Amrutkar, Indian secularism: is it a way communalism?,3 the Indian journal of political science 745,747-751(2010)
[3] Urvil Mukhopadhyay, Communalism, secularism and Indian historical films,15 Economic and political weekly 63,65-719(2008)
[4] Ibid.
[5] The cinematograph act 1952,§3,4,No. 10,Acts of Parliament,1952(India)
Author: SHREESHA REDDY A R
School of Law, Christ University.