Contrary to popular perception, Bollywood is not the bad boy of Indian cinema. Tamil and Telugu cinema are worse than Bollywood when it comes to violence and showing women in bad light in celluloid.
The Indian cinema's watchdog - the Censor Board - had to use its scissors more on regional cinema from southern India than the usual culprit Bollywood to ensure that the movies are fit for screening even under adult category.
Information provided by the board under Right To Information Act to Pune based Vihar Druve shows that since 2008 the maximum number of cuts imposed were on Tamil films followed by Telugu, Kannada and Hindi films.
In the five year period, the board cut 592 scenes from Tamil films, 509 from Telugu and 457 on Kannada films. Hindi was fourth in the list with 222 cuts even though it had maximum number of films cleared by the board during the period.
Analysis of the data shows that the board had to cut a scene from every second Tamil and Telugu films whereas in case of Bollywood the rate was one scene in every four films. Proportion of the cuts applied to the total number of movies cleared in other regional language movies such as Bhojpuri, Marathi and Gujarati during this period was higher than Bollywood.
