Indian Cinema and Censorship: Featuring Anna M.M. Vetticad

The hosts are joined by award-winning film critic and journalist Anna M.M. Vetticad for a conversation on the state of Indian cinema under Modi-era censorship. A veteran of over 30 years in journalism, Anna brings her incisive political analysis and deep knowledge of film culture to this episode — exposing how India’s cinematic landscape has become a battleground for ideology, identity, and power.

The episode opens by locating cinema as a contested space — one long understood by right-wing regimes as a site of influence. Cinema’s ability to shape narratives and rewrite memory has been crucial to the rise of fascist aesthetics in India. Anna unpacks this, walking us through the seismic shifts she’s witnessed as the Hindi film industry folds itself into a willing arm of propaganda — while regional cinemas like Tamil and Malayalam push back, albeit within their own deeply patriarchal structures.

Together, the hosts and Anna break down the difference between old and new censorship — no longer confined to the formal mechanisms of the CBFC, but a sprawling ecosystem of soft coercion, self-censorship, ideological appeasement, and weaponised “hurt sentiments.” Anna explains how even innocuous details — like a character eating chicken or bearing a Hindu name — are now seen as political provocations. The conversation draws from Anna’s landmark Article 14 investigation, revealing the growing climate of fear, complicity, and ideological capture among India’s most powerful cultural producers.

But the rot isn’t just institutional — it’s also representational. The group traces the casteist and communal undercurrents of blockbuster films like RRR and Kesari, the masculine saviour complex glorified in pan-India hits, and the soft erasure of minority identities in so-called secular classics like Veer-Zaara. Anna also sharply critiques the toxic misogyny embedded within South Indian industries, questioning how progressive a cinema can be when it remains tethered to structures of hero worship and patriarchal dominance.

Even amid this, there are flickers of resistance. Anna urges us to remember the stakes — and the power — of storytelling. Anna leaves us with a cautious optimism: that pushing too hard might spark a reckoning, that even in the face of repression, stories will find their way through.

Keywords

India, cinema, censorship, Modi, soft power, propaganda, Hindutva, self-censorship, Veer-Zaara, Kesari, RRR, Article 14, misogyny, South India, secularism, interfaith romance, fascist aesthetics, narrative, resistance.

Read some of Anna’s work here:

1. How A Modi-Era Ecosystem Of Official & Unofficial Censorship Is Transforming India’s Film Industries, Article 14, https://article-14.com/post/how-a-modi-era-ecosystem-of-official-unofficial-censorship-is-transforming-india-s-film-industries-679fdbcd6f914
2. Hindi cinema’s lone rangers: Dissent in a sea of propaganda films, The News Minute, https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/hindi-cinemas-lone-rangers-dissent-in-a-sea-of-propaganda-films
3. Trial by Cinema, Supreme Court Observer, https://www.scobserver.in/75-years-of-sc/trial-by-cinema-films/
4. A Wake-up Call for All Indian Film Industries, The Quint, https://www.thequint.com/opinion/hema-committee-report-wake-up-call-indian-film-industry-amma-malayalam-cinema
5. Stereotyped, exoticised, then erased: How Hindi cinema shaped North India's misconceptions about Christians, Economic Times, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/stereotyped-exoticised-then-erased-how-hindi-cinema-shaped-north-indias-misconceptions-about-christians/articleshow/120236783.cms?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAadcg7-7K9FQb5fafbJO9DSvRW1RgPRtzvEU2KVVRVnfK30IcJE4I4Epba6WdQ_aem_yy5_7QvkW-cRe_cCjPMblQ&from=mdr

Guest: Anna M.M. Vetticad

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