Khalid Mohamed assesses the now accessible 1969 documentary, Phantom India, helmed by the French auteur Malle, which had been banned for depicting the poverty in India from a ‘western gaze’—a mirror to censorship, sensitivity, and the fragility of creative truth.

“When Phantom India Was Ghosted” by Khalid Mohamed revisits Louis Malle’s controversial 1969 documentary, banned for its ‘Western gaze’ on India’s poverty. This retrospective explores censorship, cinematic truth, and the fragile balance between artistic freedom and national image, drawing parallels from Malle to Satyajit Ray, Antonioni, and modern-day documentary suppression.

He had assented to an interview for The Times of India, with reluctance. Clearly, American actor Candice Bergen – in the city then for a shoot of Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1983) to portray the role of photographer Margaret Bourke-White – had persuaded her husband, the legendary French auteur Louis Malle (1932-1995), to quit procrastinating in their suite at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

Reason for Louis Malle’s hesitation, self-financed cult documentary Phantom India: Reflections of a Journey (1969) had been banned in India for uncovering the reality of the nation which, it was decreed, was ‘one-sided’. Its muffling wasn’t official since it wasn’t submitted to the Censor Board of India for Film Certification. Reportedly, the then Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, was so incensed by the documentary that the ban was de facto.

In fact, Malle felt that he had been blacklisted in India for his ‘most personal film’, and his presence in Bombay should go undetected. Hence the topic was not to be raised, and whatever he would say shouldn’t be tape-recorded.

At the end of our hopelessly lame conversation on his Nouvelle Vague films Elevator to the Gallows (1958), The Lovers (1958), Zazie in the Metro (1960) and The Fire Within (1963), he pleaded that I should bin the interview. “I’ve just spoken some nonsense, it wouldn’t interest your readers.” Fair enough, I shredded the shorthand squiggles in my notepad right away. The filmmaker was looking so nervous that I wondered if he was being paranoid.

The Censored Vision and Its Aftermath

Malle hasn’t been the only European director who has been subjected to such censorious treatment. After the Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni’s visit to the New Delhi International Film Festival in 1977, he had filmed a documentary in and outside Bombay, assisted by the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune graduate, Nandan Kudhyady. Quite rudely, Antonioni was stopped at the airport on his way back to Rome. The customs officers had asked to inspect the reels. Infuriated by the very demand, he removed all the shot footage from the reels and flung it at their faces. The exposed footage was lost forever.

To revert to Malle’s seven-part documentary series, each episode lasting 51 minutes, it is a chronicle of his travels and exploration across India. In his own voice-over, the auteur had pointed out the widespread persistence of manual labour. He admitted that his camera was “stealing” images of women who have practically “nothing” and thought of him as a Martian entering their universe without permission, using his camera as a “weapon”.

The focus is frequently on a variety of underprivileged people’s eyes and stares, which indeed becomes the leitmotif of Phantom India.

Be it at a village wedding, visuals capturing caste discrimination in the small towns or a leftist party’s demonstration, Malle discloses a fusion of a judgemental and poetic approach. He refers to a transvestite wearing excessive make-up “like something out of a Fellini film.” About the only needlessly lengthy shot of stray dogs and vultures feeding on carrion, jars.

Halting otherwise to look at the rangoli patterns being designed for an upcoming religious festival, he comments that Indian women are stunningly beautiful, simultaneously noting that during the five months of shoot, with the exception of a candid moment showing a boy and girl flirting, there is no ‘love’ or ‘passion’ among the genders.

Worse, the birth of a dark-complexioned girl into the most entitled of families becomes a lifelong embarrassment for the parents.

Travelling through places of worship, including the Sun Temple of Konarak in Odisha, to marvel at their architecture, he also encounters hippies who are in a trance-like state. Cut to one of them who’s fallen sick and has to return home because of the lack of medical facilities.

Or should one say a rehabilitation centre?

Relentlessly, after the opening three episodes, the endeavour deals with an unerring eye on topics whose titles speak for themselves: “Dreams and Reality”, “A Look at the Castes”, “On the Fringes of Indian Society” and “Bombay: The Future of India.”

The concluding episode has been described by its detractors unevenly as being blatantly political and forward-looking.

Bombay is shown as a megapolis where it takes either ingenuity or resilience to survive, among crowds of people from diverse religions and roots. An “ultra-modern” petrochemical factory is suffused with health hazards. Betraying a lack of sufficient research, Malle is shocked by the cages of the red-light district of Falkland Road.

Similarly, he is jolted by the right-wing stand of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray. On a more positive note, there’s his admiration of the city’s mercantile trade, the faith in astrology among the old-generation families, and the renaissance of yoga as a means to physical fitness.

The colonial heritage left behind by the British is perceived through the art deco buildings, the continuing shepherding of the traffic by trained police, and the thoughtfully articulated statements of various intellectuals, politicians and economists about what’s next or should be next for post-Independence India.

A Ban That Echoes Through Time

The reasons for the ban were cited as a biased and negative depiction of India, presented by a ‘Western gaze’, highlighting the galloping state of poverty and backwardness.

Followed a diplomatic wrangle: in 1970 the Indian government asked the BBC to stop broadcasting the series. The BBC's New Delhi bureau was temporarily asked to leave the country. In his defence, Malle stated that he was only following his camera without any preconceived notions.

Despite the demands by several Members of Parliament, the BBC refused to stop broadcasting the series. The BBC was allowed to resume its operations in India in 1972 – not out of a negotiated settlement but because of a gradual normalisation of relations with the British broadcaster.

As a rebuttal of sorts, the Indian government presented its own four-hour documentary series, Indus Valley to Indira Gandhi, in 1976. Directed by S. Krishnaswamy, covering 5,000 years of Indian history, cultural and social issues, it is believed to be the most expensive non-fiction film made in India at the time and was distributed by Warner Bros.

Incidentally, the Phantom India incident appears to have served as a precedent. More recently in January 2023, the Indian government used emergency powers under the IT Rules, 2021, to direct social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter to block links and clips of a two-part documentary aired by BBC 2, India: The Modi Question, from being circulated within India.

The government described the documentary, which examined Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role during the 2002 Gujarat riots, as a "hateful propaganda piece" that lacked objectivity and reflected a "colonial mindset". This move effectively blocked the documentary's public access in India, though the BBC as an organisation was not completely banned from operating in the country.
Such incidents emphasise the point that whichever party may be ruling the central government, the medium of documentaries is vulnerable, never mind the by-now-anachronistic principle of freedom of expression.

Censorship, Irony, and the Enduring Legacy

Throwback to 1980: During her maiden speech as a nominated Member of Parliament (MP) in the Rajya Sabha, actor Nargis Dutt had lambasted Satyajit Ray’s iconic Apu Trilogy for exporting India’s extreme poverty to the world. Her primary points of criticism were that Ray was being lionised in the West for "peddling" images of India's extreme poverty to the world, drawing the curtain on the progress of modern India.

Like Louis Malle, Satyajit Ray maintained silence on the remarks. However, lauded filmmakers Mrinal Sen and Shyam Benegal strongly defended the cinema of Ray.

I’ve brought up Louis Malle’s Phantom India as the prime case in point because ‘bans’ inadvertently merely stoke the interest of the public to see the forbidden content. It was eventually screened at film festivals in India in the 1990s.

Moreover, the incident had already spurred the Non-Aligned Movement to draft strategies, culminating in the New World Information and Communication Order by UNESCO. The mini-series is available today on DVD and in box sets, such as those released by the Criterion Collection, making it accessible to audiences worldwide. In addition, an impeccably restored print is just a click away on YouTube, which is where I saw the 363-minuter in instalments. The commentary in French by Malle in a voice-over is accompanied by English subtitles.

Innumerable documentaries by Indian filmmakers have also faced bans and drastic revisions, from the 1960s to the current millennium, which is another story by itself.

However, like the muzzling of the press during the Emergency (1975–77), the rough treatment meted out to documentaries doesn’t last beyond a point of time. Platforms are given to them at international film festivals and on independent overseas streaming channels. Bans, then, perhaps have become a redundant four-letter word.

After the fracas over Phantom India, Malle toted an eclectic oeuvre of feature films comprising the World War II drama Lacombe Lucien (1974), the period chamber piece Pretty Baby (1978), the romedy Atlantic City (1980), the largely conversational My Dinner with Andre, and the autobiographical Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) on his schooldays.

Plus there’s the documentary Calcutta (1969), shot in collaboration with Mrinal Sen, which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. This could have been unused footage from Phantom India, but this has never been verified.

To this day, the more than visible fear in Louis Malle’s eyes at The Taj Mahal Hotel on returning to India after Phantom India has stayed with me. If this could happen to a film master of global stature, you can imagine the dread among those in India who dare to show it the way it is. Or has always been.