Congress evades response on Amartya Sen film row

The Congress today steered clear of the row over the censor board stalling a documentary film on Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, but said the party believes that India's pluralism is precious and condemns anything that divides it.
"India's pluralism is precious and fundamental and anything by way of division - imagined or real or projected or provoked in the name of caste, religion, region etc is condemned and denied by the Congress party," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said.
Singhvi said this is an internal principle of the Congress and is not changeable according to fact and situation.
He said the question on censor board stalling the film should be ideally addressed to the producer, director or management of the documentary which he has not seen.

He said the film is not produced by the Congress or any of its office-bearers and thus he cannot speak on the filmmaker's behalf.
The documentary on Sen has been stalled by the Censor Board, with its director Suman Ghosh being told to mute words like "cow", "Gujarat" and "Hindutva" uttered by the Nobel laureate in the film.

The planned release of the film titled 'The Argumentative Indian' for this weekend in Kolkata is now uncertain with Ghosh today refusing to mute four words asked by the Central Board of Film Certification's (CBFC) regional office here for getting the censor certificate. The words also included "Hindu India".

The move by the CBFC came in for sharp condemnation with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee voicing concern while Ghosh said he was shocked and taken aback.
"Every single voice of the opposition is being muzzled. Now, Dr Amartya Sen. If somebody of his stature cannot express himself freely, what hope does the common citizen have," Banerjee said in a tweet.