Bollywood Movies that were Banned

Fire (1996)

Director: Deepa Mehta

Star Cast: Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das and Karishma Jhalani

Fire by Deepa Mehta was the first of her Element Trilogy movies; the other two were Earth in 1998 and Water in 2005. The movie is loosely based on Ismat Chugtai’s 1941 novel Lihaf. This movie was one of the first few mainstream movies to portray homosexual relations.

The movie was passed for release in 1996 but it was meant by opposition from Right Winged parties who claimed that the movies maligned the Indian woman and the Indian culture. The activists went on to claim that lesbianism did not exist in Hindu families and it was an attempt to slander the Hindu culture.

Though the movie went on to impress many people at various International Film Festivals and it also was applauded by the critics and they used adjectives like gutsy, explosive, path breaking to describe it. 

The resentment against Deepa Mehta  by certain Hindu groups were so high that she wasn’t allowed to shoot her third and final movie of trilogy “Water” in India