Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma on Friday said the censor board in India has become ‘outdated’ and irrelevant, arguing that it is not in sync with the realities of a digital, hyper-connected world.

Reacting to the censorship controversy surrounding actor Vijay’s upcoming film Jana Nayagan, Varma said the debate should not be limited to one film. “It is truly foolish to think that the censor board is still relevant today,” he said, adding that the institution has “long outlived its purpose”.

Varma said censorship was created in an era when access to images and information was limited and tightly controlled by the state. “But today, any form of control is impossible because no one can decide what people should or should not see,” he added.

“We live in a time where a 12-year-old with a phone can watch a terrorist execution filmed on a GoPro, a 9-year-old can stumble upon hardcore porn, and a bored retiree can binge extremist propaganda… uncut, uncensored, algorithmically pushed,” the director of Satya said.

He also questioned the logic of censoring films while other media remain largely unregulated. “If you quote that age-old belief that cinema is a powerful medium, don’t ignore the fact that social media has far more reach than cinema,” Varma said, referring to what he described as “political venom, communal poison and live, uncensored shouting matches” across platforms.

Calling the board’s interventions ineffective, Varma said, “For the honourable censor board to believe that cutting a word in a film, trimming a shot, or blurring a cigarette will protect society is a joke.”

“What the censor board actually does now is not protection, but only theatrics,” Varma argued. “It’s a ritual of authority where scissors replace thinking, and moral pretence moves around in a disguise called responsibility. Censorship doesn’t prevent exposure… it only insults the viewers,” he said, questioning why citizens are trusted to choose governments but not what they watch or hear.

Emphasising constitutional freedoms, he said the role of authorities is not to edit creative expression. “The job of the authorities is not to edit or cut them out, but to trust citizens enough to decide for themselves, which is the main point of freedom of speech and expression,” he said. “Age classification makes sense. Warnings of the content make sense. Censorship does not,” he said.

Varma said the larger question was whether authorities would acknowledge this reality and whether the film industry would collectively challenge the system. “The fight should be with that particular system of thinking which created the censor board,” he added.