Custom Against On-Screen Kissing by Film Lovers

The Custom Against On-Screen Kissing by Film Lovers restricted romantic leads from kissing one another on screen, on the stated grounds that such displays might corrupt the nation’s youth. In Hanif Aziz’s first feature, The Lovers of Kashmir, the restriction becomes the premise for an indirect style of screen romance: Pia and I. S. Nayyar express their love through objects rather than through contact with each other.

The convention and its rationale

The rule shaped what film audiences could see of romantic intimacy. Its stated purpose was moral protection: the sight of lover-boys and leading ladies kissing might corrupt young viewers. The convention therefore imposed a visible boundary on onscreen courtship, even as filmmakers could devise ways to suggest desire within it.

Hanif Aziz’s filmic response

Hanif Aziz’s The Lovers of Kashmir, partly financed by Homi Catrack and D. W. Rama Studios, made that boundary a source of invention. Thirty-three minutes into the premiere, Pia and Nayyar began kissing objects rather than each other. Pia kissed an apple and passed it to Nayyar, who kissed its opposite side; the film’s indirect kiss made the restriction legible while finding a new means of expressing attraction.

Objects, setting, and suggestion

The device recurred beyond the apple. Against the backdrop of Dal Lake and a Kashmiri sky, the pair kissed cups of pink Kashmiri tea; near the foundations of Shalimar, they pressed their lips to a sword. Each object mediated a gesture that the convention prohibited between the performers themselves. The scene thus turned constraint into cinematic grammar: romance was communicated through what the lovers touched, not through a kiss exchanged directly.