Censor drops ‘bloody’ from Hawaizaada

The word “bloody” referring to Indians may have been part of numerous Bollywood films based in the colonial era, but director Vibhu Puri was asked to replace the word with a milder term in his film Hawaizaada. Manmohan Desai’s Mard to Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan are a few examples of films that had the term; however, Vibhu’s film won’t.

Says an exasperated Puri, “I had no choice but to replace the word ‘bloody Indian’ with ‘crazy Indian’. I am aware that the Britishers in our earlier films have been shown to use the term ‘bloody Indian’, but if I had insisted on using it, I’d have got a ‘UA’ certificate instead of ‘U’. So I preferred to change the supposedly offensive word as it made no difference to my narrative.”

Vibhu tells us that he was also asked to replace a word prefixing a holy book in the soundtrack. Adds Vibhu, “Since it’s a religious matter this cut makes more sense to me. But the other cut does seem a bit crazy. But I am happy that the censor board didn’t cut a single shot in my film.”