RTM censors Punjabi film for showing positive side of humanity!

By DJ Bombay Singh (George Town) | LETTER TO EDITOR | MALAYSIA |

Hello Editor,

On a recent Wednesday night (6 May), I watched Lahoriye on RTM’s TV2. The film is about a pair of lovers who, despite having the same ethnicity, differ on their faiths, and to make it worse, belong to countries that have bitter past between their governments.

To be specific, it was about Kikkar Singh, a Sikh-Punjabi and Ameeran, a Muslim-Punjabi, whose respective grandparents had to swap their lands between what was to become the divided Punjab, during the partition of India and creation of Pakistan in 1947.

While both sides of the families had no problems with the marriage, a relative who is a budding politician had to become the spoilsport. What this character in the film imply is that government(s) come in between, often for ego and selfish reasons, even when on ground level, there is already love and acceptance between the families of different faiths.

The poignant and best scene of the film was when Ameeran’s grandfather finally meets and tightly hugs Kikkar’s grandfather, who was responsible for him to be still alive during the mad times of the partition of the country.

All’s well that ends well.

At the end of the film, Kikkar and Ameeran are happily married with a child while Kikkar’s sister has also married to Ameeran’s landlord’s son. The faith of all the characters now was not implied and instead, a typical family day-to-day situations was emphasised.

Now, what was wrong with this ending of the film? Doesn’t a marriage need to have abundance of love, trust, sacrifice and acceptance?

What was so wrong that RTM decided the ending of the film cannot be shown and had to be totally snipped off?

Does this mean that it is okay to show the love between different faiths but not when they are happily married?

When a man marries a woman, what is the most important thing between them? Love or religion? If it is the latter, then why do we have so many divorce cases despite the couple being of the same faith?

The message of the film was love triumphs over anything else in the world. (Of course, they should both be 18 years old and above)

If RTM could not get the message and purpose of the film, then what was the point in screening of such stories?

If the station was not going to show the positive scenes of humanity at the end of the movie, then why even bother to screen the film in the first place?

It is so bizarre to note that a movie was censored not for negativity, but for showing positivity!