How Empuraan Fracas Exposes Filmmakers' Disregard For Facts And Gaps In CBFC’s Certification Process

Even as this article is being written, the now controversial big budget Malayalam film L2: Empuraan, also released pan India in three dubbed Indian languages on March 27, 2025, is going through voluntary revisions by the filmmakers.

This comes after the public backlash against what many see as a one-sided representation of the tragic Gujarat riots of 2002 in the film.

The film will come up for re-certification by the Central Board of Film Certification. However, the Rs 180-crore budget film is still running in 4,000 movie halls across four languages – Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, and has crossed the Rs 50 crore mark at the Indian box office in five days.

This writer has not watched this film but attempts to share observations that could help inform future filmmakers and the Central Board of Film Certification.

News reports say the required 17 corrections/cuts for L2: Empuraan might take two days to a week. The valid question then, that any concerned citizen should ask is  - if the backlash to the film has been acknowledged by the lead star Mohanlal, who has even apologised, why isn’t its screening across the nation being put on hold until re-release?

If an incorrect representation in this film of Hindus as being the sole aggressors and Muslims being victims alone, with a Hindu name like Baba Bajrangi being reportedly used for the name of a character of a Hindu leader instigating riots against Muslims is still being seen, it clearly defeats the purpose of revision and correction.

Further, as per the law, if a film’s producer does not send the cut list to distributors or the latter do not send the list to theatres, it would be an offence under Section 6A of the Cinematograph Act, as stated on the CBFC website. But would anyone be really checking if this is done after revisions, so that all 4,000 screening halls get the edited, re-certified version of Empuraan film? 

It is this that reveals the vulnerability of film audiences and why the CBFC examining committees of films must take their work very seriously.

Most of us who watch films know little about the film certification process. The CBFC website has names of members of the Advisory Panel. It also states that “CBFC Advisory Panel Members are appointed in the nine Regional Centers of Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in accordance with Section 5(1) of the Cinematograph Act,1952. These Panel members are persons qualified in the opinion of the Central Government to judge the effect of films on the public.”  The key words are “to judge the effect of films on the public.” It is clear that in the case of the film Empuraan this panel did not do the necessary due diligence.

The CBFC has nine regional offices, one each at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Cuttack and Guwahati.

It uses a two-tier system for film certification, with the Examining Committee (EC) being the initial panel that reviews films and makes recommendations for certification, while the Revising Committee (RC) acts as a second-tier panel to review the EC's decisions if needed. The website further states that the RC is convened if there's a difference of opinion within the EC or if the applicant is dissatisfied with the EC's decision.  

It has been reported in the media that after the examining committee of CBCF Thiruvananthapuram Regional Officer, Nadeem Thufail and four members — Swaroopa Kartha, Roshni Das K, GM Mahesh, and Manjuhasan MM - initially reviewed Empuraan, only 10 seconds of cuts was asked for in the film that was then 179 minutes and 52 seconds long. 

If not even one differing opinion was given by these panel members to flag anything that is erroneous in Empuraan and could possibly affect public opinion or perceptions of communities, thereby necessitating the convening of an RC, it is a serious lapse.

Opinions have been flying fast and furious online, and in news articles depending on which side of the right and left the social media users, media companies and journalists are.

Lead actor of the film, Malayalam superstar Mohanlal has issued an apology online and assured that corrections will be made in the film. Actor and director Prithviraj Sukumaran reposted Mohanlal’s apology but Prithviraj’s stand in particular, is being called out and his previous posts on social media platform X supporting Delhi Jamia University students’ anti Citizenship Amendment Act protests, are doing the rounds online. 

The standard theme in the mainstream media coverage on the Empuraan film controversy is that the corrections now being made in a rush are due to a ‘right-wing backlash’ and that this shows right wing bullying and control over freedom of artistic representation.

One of them, GM Mahesh, is the General Secretary of Tapasya, the cultural forum of the BJP, and after the fracas following L2: Empuraan’s release, the New Indian Express reported that Mahesh, on being asked about it, said on March 29, 2025, that the Censor Board can only act as per the rules.

Other news reports hinted at some members of the BJP questioning amongst themselves as to how a film that reportedly presents Hindus as violent aggressors in the 2002 Gujarat riots while not showing the other side or the Special Investigative Team (SIT)’s clean chit to Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, in 2012, was allowed to pass without question. They see this as a big lapse.

Interestingly, senior leader of the Kerala BJP, M.T. Ramesh, amidst all this, said that films should be viewed as films, and there was no need to see them in any other light or boycott them. A responsible comment but one that serves no purpose to a confused audience looking for clarity.

Self-appointed liberals can be relieved that there is actually no BJP /RSS control on movies, while those who want more control rein in their disappointment. Politics and criticism of the film from organisations aside, the backlash to this film is mainly from concerned citizens, mainly Hindus. Who have every right to raise their voice against deliberate mudslinging against the community, and want to see a film that does not distort communally sensitive events.

Going back in time, the 2012 SIT had cleared then CM Narendra Modi of complicity in the 2002 riots and violence, and also rejected claims that the state government had not done enough to prevent the riots. This SIT was appointed by the Supreme Court of India, and the Central government then was under UPA-II. Important facts that merited mention in a 2025 film, if the Gujarat riots were being referenced.

In a media environment that continually tries to peddle a narrative of Muslims alone as victims in communal riots in India, especially the Gujarat riots of 2002, any additional media input, like a big budget, high-octane movie, released on a pan-India basis that reinforces such a theme, only works to deepen fault lines in the country’s social fabric.

It is clear that the makers and especially the film’s writer have not read the SIT report or Part II of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission report of 2014 as well. This report had cleared Narendra Modi of any complicity or involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The Commission also absolved the State administration, Ministers and police officers from any complicity, direct or indirect, and ruled out any conspiracy to organise the large-scale riots. It described the riots as a spontaneous response to the burning alive of kar sevaks in Godhra, in the Sabarmati Expres,s on February 27,2002. Here, 59 kar sevaks, sevikas including children, were burnt alive.

Empuraan apparently does not place this context of the Gujarat riots fairly, and only shows detailed depictions of Muslims victims of violence, implying it to be more of a vengeful pogrom against Muslims by Hindus. This narrative is akin to the media propaganda we saw at the time, kept seeing over 20 years later and continue to see even now. When it was, in fact, a communal riot  between two communities. Of the 1,000 deaths in the Gujarat riots, 254 were of Hindus including women and teenagers.

Part II of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission report is 142 pages and goes into specific details of riot incidents all across Gujarat after the Godhra train burning, noting how Muslims too murdered Hindus during the riots. It is important here to ask if Examining Committees that review films in CBFC are not authorised to ask specific, data-driven questions of filmmakers viz, one-sided erroneous representation, or is “artistic licence” so broad a concept that anything goes?

Even given the film makers’ personal biases, if just the SIT and Nanavati-Mehta Commission reports had been thoroughly read by them, one-sided propaganda would not be peddled as truths, leading to this disruption in what should have otherwise been a massy, entertaining film.

Any disruption after a film’s release entails that the film’s producers make some losses. Manorama Online has reported that producer Gokulam Gopalan has admitted that re-edit and re-censoring the film wouldn’t be a simple affair and estimated that with Empuraan running in 4000 cinemas, it would cost at least Rs 40 lakh to make the changes.

Apart from the biased Gujarat riots’, reference, online reviewers have also noted how Empuraan has presented all Indian government authorities and agencies as corrupt and inefficient, presenting instead a mafia-like character as the saviour and showing a foreign deep state agency as helpful and moralistic.

Among any audience, especially a more impressionable younger population, such depictions can undermine public confidence in the Indian state. Which is a serious concern for a growing economy with the largest young demographic in the world.

Film audiences, like consumers, are vulnerable to misinformation and if filmmakers are not responsible when referencing communal events or historic facts, it is the CBFC that needs to ensure this.

The Board’s remit, its guidelines and rules need to be reviewed with amendments made if required, so that such controversies do not happen where an understandable public reaction forces mid-course correction by the filmmakers. But with the original film Empuraan still running in 4,000 screens, one can say the damage to public misinformation has already been done.