Kissing in Indian movies

I think that Indian movies are either censored and/or no kissing has just been the convention. Indian society generally frowns on public displays of affection. Whatever their location and subject matter, Bride and Prejudice is a British movie made by a British director (of Indian background), and although Mira Nair is Indian she has lived in New York for a long time and makes movies in America. Neither would be subjected to Indian censorship rules although their movies would be edited when shown in India.

In addition to the kissing, which was probably edited out, this movie would have been a problem in India due to the inclusion of the child-molesting uncle. I don't know what they did when the movie was shown in India, but this would have been more trouble to remove without having parts of the story make no sense. I don't want to sound like I'm overally generalizing, but many Indians believe they are morally superior to the West and I'm sure many would refuse to believe those sorts of people exist in India.

Kissing is indeed something that was for a long time taboo to show in a movie. You may recall that in MONSOON WEDDING the kissing scenes were not done in public, but in private. This is because, as another poster said, Indian frown at the smallest form of intimacy, and that's why a huge part of the movie made from the 40s till the 90s did not contain any kissing scenes. But, as any other country, India is changing, and so are its films. I myself have grown up watching Hindi movies so I think I know what was considered normal and what not in movies, and based on that I think Hindi cinema has changed a lot especially in the last 10 years. Nowadays, many movies contain kissing scenes. I think it's safe to say that most movies contain them.

That's not to say that there was no eroticism in Hindi movies. There always have been in some way. :) But kissing was out of the order. Not anymore.

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hi aynrand. well its important to put censorship and kissing in indian movies in some perspective. fact of the matter is that the indian censor board has been more or less reasonable when it comes to onscreen intimacy, i.e, kissing. apparently the 30s and 40s in india did see some amount of kissing, and then it all but disappeared. this, in addition to society, censorship bla bla, actually had more to do with the opinion that the public would hold about the actress doing the scene. the result was that most actresses for almost 60 years were too shy, embarrassed or reluctant to kiss on screen, to avoid being type-cast as bimbos or sex-pots. lots of leading ladies such as zeenat aman, mandakini, madhuri dixit (i hope youve heard of her) and gowthami (from the south) all had done some or lots of kissing early on in their careers. i guess they were easy to convince (by the directors) at that stage of their careers. their future successes meant that they became picky and could dictate terms as to what they would do and what they wouldnt. ALL THAT changed in 2004 with the arrival of possibly the boldest woman on Indian screen ever-Mallika Sherawat. In a water-shed movie which had close to 15 love scenes, she changed the face of actresses in Indian cinema. now everyone in bollywood and the other indian film industries, does it relatively frequently and without hassles. so..bottomline, censorship and public opinion in the 'family-morality' sense, was hardly ever in play. as for indian society, yeah PDA has always been frowned upon especially in rural india. heck, it seems lots of married couples who are poor and those who live in villages, joint families and/or shanty towns, hardly see their spouses naked, EVER, in their entire married lives. as you can see, morality is a tiiiiiiny % of so many other factors. of course..thankfully..its all changing. btw..leading ladies have shown breasts and nipples (though thru wet clothing ;) of course) in indian movies before as well. hope this helps.
ciao.