Indu Sarkar controversy: 5 Bollywood movies that got into trouble due to political reasons

Movies and politics are seldom friendly. While today, movies are more knowledgeable than textbooks (in some aspects), but they aren't treated as a medium of awareness. A film has always been and will always be taken as propaganda only if it touches something from real life.

Creative and cinematic liberties are mere words. Banning work of art is not new, especially when it comes to films, censor board and politicians have been behaving like a judge's gavel since long. The latest to get smashed under this gavel is Madhu Bhandarkar's Indu Sarkar.

Several movies have become victims of dirty politics and we bring you the details of some of them that created headlines for various political reasons in last five years. 

Madras Cafe: The reason for the controversy was that the movie showed a similar incident as that of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination by an LTTE suicide bomber. It angered some Tamil activist groups as they felt LTTE were shown as terrorists.

Haider: The movie was set in Indian-administered Kashmir. Many claimed the movie was sympathetic to separatists and that it doesn't account for the suffering of the Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to flee the state; also many felt the movie insulted the Indian army.

PK: The film narrates the story from the point of view of PK, an alien, who lands on the Blue Planet and realises the amount of chaos that prevails here. A few Hindutva groups claimed that PK made fun of Hinduism. On the other hand, All India Muslim Personal Law Board also demanded that the Censor Board remove some scenes in the interest of maintaining communal harmony.

Udta Punjab: With Anurag Kashyap's Udta Punjab, both CBFC and politic circles were not ready to give the film a breathing space. Highlighting drug menace in the state of Punjab, the film even before its release was being hailed as a project aiming at showing the state in bad light.

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil: Post Uri attacks and the subsequent IMPPA diktat of banning Pakistani artistes from working in the country, the members of Cinema Owners Exhibitors Association of India (COEAI) decided that no films starring any Pakistani actors will be released in theatres. This directly affected Karan Johar's 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil', which starred Pakistani talent Fawad Khan.

Indu Sarkar: Indu Sarkar is the latest movie to face the heat. Inspired by the Emergency imposed by then prime minister Indira Gandhi in India in 1975, it is a human drama at the backdrop of true facts. The movie will be releasing on July 28.