Indian Cinematograph Committee

The Indian Cinematograph Committee was established by British Raj in 1927 to "investigate the adequacy of censorship and the supposedly immoral effect of cinematograph films", and subsequently the Indian Cinematograph Committee Evidence and Report 1927-1928 was published in the following year. Background In the 1920s, just as the early twilight of the British Empire was approaching, a slightly familiar battle was fought, in a slightly unusual terrain, Cinema. The American film industry had by the twenties already started to dominate the global film market, with American films eclipsing English films in most parts of the British Empire. In response to a number of demands being made by the British film industry for the setting up of quotas in favour of Empire films in the colonies, and as a result of increasing anxiety about the spread of the new technology of cinema in the colonies, the colonial government put together the Indian Cinematograph Committee (“ICC”) to enquire into the working of cinema and censorship in India. The report, and the evidence of the ICC was compiled into five volumes, and contains many oral and written testimonies. However, these documents have been ignored in most debates on film censorship. At the British Imperial conference held in England in 1926, a number of the delegates raised questions about the adequacy of film censorship to deal with the problems posed by the exhibition of American films. They were, in part, responding to the complaints registered by the Federation of British Industries to the board of trade about what they considered to be a virtual monopoly enjoyed by American films within the empire. This trade organization had represented their case not merely as a matter of protecting British business interests, but also because American films were "detrimental to British prestige and prejudicial to the interests of the empire, especially in the dominions which contains large colored populations". In connection to these concerns, the imperial conference passed a resolution recommending that appropriate action be taken to combat the dominance of Hollywood's films by encouraging their production within the empire.