A Specter Haunts Bombay: Censored Itineraries of a Lost Communistic Film

ABSTRACT:This article situates a lost film titled Mill or Mazdoor (1934/1939) and its history of proscription at the intersection of three arguments: (1) that the loss of the film artifact should not preclude attempts for historiographic engagement and interpretation; (2) that site-specific histories of film censorship tell a significant story about the meanings and emotions generated by a film; and (3) that the repeated return of the censored, proscribed, or lost film complicates approaches to origins, authorship, and provenance. Through archival research, analysis of publicity materials, and engagement with scholarship on film censorship, urban and industrial history, and geography, I embed the story of Mill within a dense history of local industrial unrest, transnational fears of filmic communism, and wranglings with a colonial censor regime. The singular travails of a proscribed film thus embody the stories of a specific place whose specificity is wrought out of its links with other places in the world.