Nostalgia: First Lip Kiss On Indian Screen in 1933

A big hue and cry is being made about bikinis and lip-to-lip kissing on screen now. But what will come, as a surprise, is that the first kissing scene was included in a film way back in the year 1933. 

This is much before independence and the society was extremely conservative at that time. The said Kissing scene involved the legendary and beautiful Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai. The title of the film was ‘Karma’. 

There was no big problem with censor board then and the director was the sole authority to decide what to show and what not to show. It doesn’t mean that there is no censor board at that time. As that was British Rule, the censor used to be cleared only by them. The British didn’t find any objection in a lip smooching scene.

Devika Rani incidentally was the first recipient of the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Award.