FilmIndia (1948)

Ol7R REV/FW "Jugnu", A Dirty, Disgusting, Vulgar Picture ! Students And Colleges Slandered ! (An advance copy of this review was sent to the Hon. Mr. Morarji Desai, Home Minister to the Government of Bombay, on the 23rd October 1948. The Home Minister saw this picture on the 26th October and banned the same on the 29th October under Section 21 of the General Clauses Act of 1897.— The Editor.) "Jugnu"', a picture produced and directed by Shaukat Hussein Rizvi (no relation of Kasim Rizvi but equally dangerous in his own field), emphasizes three basic facts: 1. That an uneducated and uncultured film producer cannot possibly portray college life in a manner other than showing it as a veritable brothel where boys and girls meet to tickle their sex and play pranks unworthy of perhaps the worst educational institution existing anywhere. 2. That our present day college students, boys and girls both, who once covered themselves with glory as budding patriots in our fight of freedom with the British, have these days become Eompletely impotent and indifferent in the face of such well-designed slander against their educational institutions by film producers who, in their quest for easy fortunes, defame our college students as sex-starved mongrels without any character or backbone. If our students will it. not one picture slandering their life at the college in such a vile manner, as is done in "Jugnu". can be shown on the screen anywhere in India. It is a pity that students who fought as slaves to win freedom should now drop their tails as free men when their character and their institutions are being scandalised by worthless film producers. 3. That the censors, in spite of the reorganization of the Censor Board and adoption of a wellwritten Production Code, are still a crowd of so many moon-struck boobies who, even after seeing a picture, do not realise its anti-social and slanderous contents which give an ugly and distorted picture of our educational institutions to the world in general and to the students in particular— a picture that is likely to de JUGNU Producers: Shaukat Art Productions Hindustani Ali Sagheer Usmani Adeeb & Sarhady P. Nizami Language: Story : Songs: Music: Photography : Audiography : Cast: P. Is Misra Dilecp Kumar, Chulani Md., Nur Jehan, Sulochana. Jilloobai etc. Released At: Capitol, Bombay Date of Release: 1st October 1948 Directed By SHAUKAT HUSSEIN RIZVI moralise both the students and the institutions. LNDLESS SEX HI NT Shaukat Hussein Rizvi, of whose educational and cultural attainments nothing is known, tells us in "'Jugnu" that college life in India is noming more than one long sex hunt in which boys chase girls, explore their hand bags, rob their tiffin boxes and sing suggestive love ditties with vulgar gestures; while girls sigh about heavily, seduce boys to tea, pimp for their friends, puncture their cycle tyres and sing songs of frustrated love. .Nowhere in the whole picture is a book seen or a class room shown to suggest that the students were there mainly for prosecuting their studies. Not even a single student, both among the boys and the girls, is shown as attached to any books or serious study which is the primarypurpose of college life. All the students, without a single exception, are evidently on one hunt — the sex hunt. A DISGUSTING SEQUENCE And this Rizv i guy shows a college drama in which lea is served to all with a cathartic mixed in it with the result that the actors and the guests get griping pains in the midst of the show and rush to the bathrooms to relieve themselves with one hand on their stomachs and the other on their behinds. This low, crude and disgusting slapstick is Rizvis idea of humour which is intended for millions who see our motion pictures every day. This sequence is so indecent that it just stinks and leaves behind the impression that Shaukat Hussein Rizvi is prepared to pick money even from a heap of faeces. In one situation a girl named Mona. a co-student of Jugnu the heroine, acts as a friendly pimp to bring together the hero and the heroine under her roof which is a palatial flat with no one else but Mona living there alone. \^ e are not shown how Mona supports herself, nor are we shown her parents or guardians. Jugnu continues to meet Suraj in Mona's flat at all odd hours till Jugnu ultimately dies of love sickness. PROSTITUTE OR STUDENT? Another college girl. Lata, is shown as in possession of another sumptuous flat which she apparently uses for seducing college boys by calling them to tea, even dragging them if necessary right from the street opposite, as she does once in case of Suraj. Suraj once surprises her in her bed and drags her out to a cinema. What a wonderful pattern of human relationship is this producer prescribing for our college boys and girls? The two colleges, the boys' and the girls', are evidently close to each other as we see the boys and the girls meeting so often. But their close interdependence is symbolised in the vulgar romance shown between the matron of the girls' hostel and the superintendent of the boys' hostel. The boys and girls make fun of this romance till both the bald superintendent and the corpulent matron become ridiculous objects of vulgar jokes by the students. There is evidently no discipline within a hundred miles of both the colleges and obviously there was not a single student, boy or girl, who was seriously interested in studies, the main purpose for which we send our children to college. THE OUD WILSON1AN The Hon. Minister Morarji Desai, who is himself an old Wilsonian. can tell us whether college life in his days was anything like the one shown in "Jugnu". If his answer is "No", then he must answer the other question: Why is this picture not banned straightway seeing that it presents a