BITTER BYTES

BOLLYWOOD SONGS KA ‘BANNED’ BAJ GAYA

 

As the saying goes, "You cannot please everyone", the same is true for Hindi film songs too. Over the years, there have been several songs that have been banned or modified or some words muted due to objections raised by certain groups. One man's potion is another man's poison. What the lyricist or the producer of the film likes is not acceptable to the objecting party. Reasons could be several - political, social, communal, casteist, suggestive content etc. Here I will discuss some popular and some lesser known songs that had to go under the knife.

The first in my list is from one of my most loved films 'Aandhi', whose songs were penned by my fav lyricist, Gulzar & composed by my fav composer RD Burman. The song in question is Salam kijiye, aali janab aaye hain,.. ye paanch salon ka dene hisab aaye hain, which was banned due to political reasons. Now if you have seen the film, it had some kind of semblance to Mrs Gandhi in terms of looks and the plot. If you listen to the lyrics of the song, it certainly had political tones to it. Note that this film was released around the time when the country was going through the emergency imposed by the then PM, Mrs G. So not just the song, but even the film was banned and was later aired on DD only when the JP government came to power. However even now you will not hear this song on AIR radio (or private stations for that matter) nor see it on TV. However it is present in the film available on YouTube or other OTT channels. The lyrics actually hold relevance in any era, any area, in India.

I remember, in the late 90s, I was selected as a Casual Announcer or आकस्मिक उद्घोषक (today more popularly known as a Radio Jockey or RJ) for Vividh Bharti Mumbai Centre after giving auditions and had to undergo a week’s training during the live broadcast of programmes on AIR (A Casual Announcer is a temporary announcer whose services are required when the permanently AIR appointed announcers wouldn’t be coming in on a given day. It’s a different matter that I developed cold feet when the first call came to me to go live for a session, and thereafter I never got one).

These were the pre-digital days when songs were played on spools or LP records. On the jacket (cover) of the vinyl disc of ‘Aandhi’, this particular song name was struck off, as a sort of instruction to the on-air announcers that this song is NOT to be played. I’m sure if one had done it by mistake, his head would have rolled. 

The second song in my list – Mera naam aao, mere paas aao.. tera naam aao, to mera naam jao, from a lesser known movie called ‘Ye Gulistaan Hamara’, starring Dev Anand, again bore the brunt due to political reasons. An interesting trivia about the song is that it is one of the only two songs that Danny has sung in Hindi movies (the other one being Sun sun kasam se from ‘Kala Sona’ picturised on Danny himself). However, this song in question was picturised on the great comedian, Johny Walker and Jayshri T. Now one would wonder as to what is so sensitive in the opening lines of the lyrics. Well, the movie plot was based in a small village on the Indo-China border. And if you listen to the song, the way it’s been composed and sung, there is no space between naam and aao and hence it sounds like ‘Mao’ (the great Chinese leader Mao-Tse-Tung). Isn’t it funny? In order to avoid complications, the song is retained but with the Mera/tera naam aao in the film simply chopped off. So the song looks & sounds very weird and meaningless on screen after the edit. The full version though is available in audio. (Music buffs must listen to both, the full and the truncated version after reading this).

The next song in the list had to be edited out due to social issues due to the word used in the lyrics. All those born in the 80s or before that would have certainly heard this one. It’s from the movie Khuddar starring Govinda & Karishma Kapoor. It’s a dance number that goes Sexy, sexy, sexy mujhe log bolein, Hi sexy, hello sexy, kyu bolein sung by Alisha Chinoi. I remember a lot of hue and cry in media then about the word sexy, so much so that for the film release, the song had to be redubbed to Baby, baby, baby mujhe log bolein and so on, with Baby replacing Sexy in the entire song. The audio tapes released much earlier had the song as it is (can’t do much about the tapes already sold and distributed in public).

However, there an interesting point to be noted here. Just a few months before this episode, there was another song in another movie with the same star pair that went Meri pant bhi sexy, meri shirt bhi sexy, ye rumal bhi sexy hai. But that went through untouched, unscathed. How and why? No possible reasoning comes to mind except that one can call an inanimate object like a shirt or pant, sexy, but not a girl. Or is it okay for a guy to use the term but not a girl?

The next two songs under discussion and that underwent an edit are – a title song ‘Ayesha’ from a non-film album of the same name by Nadeem Saifi (of Nadeem-Sharavan duo) and ‘Ya Mustafa, ya mustafa’. They were replaced by the words ‘Sayesha’ and ‘Ya Dilruba’ as the original names are those that appear in Islamic religious texts.

Likewise the famous song Jumma Chumma de de, Jumme ke din kiya chumme ka waada from ‘Hum’ was not censored in the film during its release, however it was sort of unofficially banned on sarkari radio (this was the time when there was no private radio channels and AIR had a monopoly). Reason perhaps was the usage of the word Jumma which means Friday, and also soliciting a kiss openly.

Now coming to songs that needed editing due to some casteist references in them.

A film that didn’t do too well commercially, but I quite liked for its simplicity & Irfan Khan’s performance is ‘Billu’. It was a modernized version of the story of Krishna-Sudama, where the protagonist, Irfan plays Billu, a barber by profession. Now originally the film was titled as ‘Billu Barber’. But after opposition from the community, the name had to be shortened to just ‘Billu’. Besides, in the title song, Billu Bhayankar penned by Gulzar, the a part in the mukhda went, Billu se bada hajjam naahi re, sari duniya mein aisa kauno naam naahi re, the casteist term had to be muted in the film during release. So if you see the video of this song, the edit is so bad that at places you can actually hear the letter ‘ha’ of hajjam. It sounds not only horrible but funny too with muted spaces appearing several times in the song.  

Another, similar example of a song, again written by Gulzar, is from the film ‘Aaja Nachle’ which marked the come-back for the queen of millions of hearts, the dancing diva, Madhuri  Dixit. Here the title song originally had a line Mohalle mein kaisi maaramaar hai, boley mochi bhi khud ko sunar hai which was then changed in the film to Mohalle mein kaisi maaramaar hai, mere dar pe deewanon ki bahar hai due to objections from the people of the caste specified.

What is interesting is that the objections in the above two cases, (or any other similar case like the renaming of the films Ram-Leela, Padmavati, Prithviraj to Goliyon ki raas leela - Ram Leela, Padmavat, Samrat Prithviraj respectively) always comes in just a few days before release, often in the same week. Now the titles of the movies are publicised and announced long before the movie release, the audio of films is released much before the movie. The songs get heard, liked, and popularised with the original content. But the objections come in only at the last minute. How? Why? It doesn’t need much of Sherlockism to decode. Obviously, the eleventh hour arm twisting & negotiating (read blackmailing) involved is to gain some benefits.

Then there are several ones with suggestive undertones that surprisingly got spared the cuts. Some of them being, the very famous one from film Vidhata, Saat saheliyan khadi khadi, followed by Padosan apni murgi ko rakhna sambhal, mera murga hua hai deewana (surprisingly, picturised on Big B),Ye maalgadi, tu dhakka laga, Choli ke pichhe kya hai, Hum to tambu mein bamboo lagaye baithe (again involving Big B), Bhag bhag DK Bose, Khada hai, khada hai, tere dar pe khada hai, Chadh gaya upar re, atariya pe lotan kabootar re, Teri le loon, bahein, bahon mein (by Dada Kondke which is not surprising as he was known to be using a lot of double meaning dialogues and songs in his Marathi films. What is interesting is that he holds a record of seven back-to-back silver jubilees as a director/producer). In fact, I feel that if one heard the very famous duet of yesteryears by Kishore & Asha, Ankhon mein kya ji? rupahla badal…, he could perhaps get an inkling of the writer’s naughty intent from the last line that goes Aanchal mein kya ji?… ajab si hulchul.

There are several more that are far too suggestive in nature that there is nothing left to imagine further.

If one were to go through the songs above, it seems pretty clear that in most of the cases, the opposition is only for selfish reasons or the authorities tread a safe path to avoid any controversy or being labeled as prejudiced to one side.

Hope this made an interesting reading. All the above cases are from my own personal observations and experiences as a Hindi movie buff over a period of years. Please feel free to comment, laud, criticize, or better still add a song that’s been missed out, or an additional point or trivia in the ones discussed above.

Thank You.

 

Dharmendra Jain