A cigarette dangling from her lips, Sharon Stone uncrosses her legs and shoots a question at police officer Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct: 'What are you going to do? Charge me with smoking?' Well, in Bollywood, that's become reality.
The Indian government has banned images of smoking from all new movies and television broadcasts from October 2 - a move that's left Bollywood fuming. Citing health concerns, the ordinance hasn't spared even old films and programmes: they must display a health warning every time a person smokes on the screen. Penalties are being worked out.
The ban - a world first - will also hit foreign films and TV broadcasts. Jaipal Reddy, India's Information and Broadcasting Minister, says that regulations are being drafted to implement the anti-smoking policy.
Announcing the ban on No-Tobacco Day on May 31, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said 800,000 Indians die each year from smoking-related diseases. 'India has the highest number of smokers who get addicted between the age of 13 and 15 in south Asia. And the biggest culprits are films and superstars,' he said. 'More youngsters and women are taking up tobacco because films glorify smoking. Some 15 million Indians go to the movies every day. So one can imagine the magnitude of the problem.'
The World Health Organisation has praised the move. 'The portrayal of attractive people smoking has a big influence on young people as some of them identify with those on the screens,' says spokesman Harsaran Pandey.
But the world's biggest film industry, which churns out more than 900 movies a year, is aghast at the clampdown. It's triggered a fierce debate in Bollywood, where as many as three out of every four Hindi films would be incomplete without the hero or the villain blowing smoke rings.
Some of Bollywood's all-time greats - Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, K.N. Singh, Rajnikant, Parveen Babi and Zeenat Aman - have smoked on screen. 'One would understand a ban on surrogate advertising, but to completely ban smoking scenes is ridiculous - a joke taken too far,' says producer-director Mahesh Bhatt. One of India's foremost filmmakers, Shyam Benegal, says smoking is a handy way to project a character's personality or emotions. 'It could be a style statement or an act of nervousness,' Benegal told the Times of India. 'The government should go after the source: the guys who produce tobacco and make tonnes of money.'
