man who was contending the very system of Censorship. It is an evidence of the rationality of the mind of Abbas who did not reject the system altogether but insisted on making it more logical and meaningful.

Abbas was conscious of what was going on in the world cinema and discussed its impact on the Indian counterpart. In many of his writings and some of the interviews that were either published or broadcast, he spoke of the desirable as well as undesirable influences of the West on the Indian Cinema. He was not very happy with the plagiarism practised in Indian Cinema. He talked about this tendency as one which would demean the status of Indian Cinema in the eyes of the world cinema. In an interview recorded on1-2-1970, Abbas complained against the servile copying of the west in Indian Cinema:

It is not the plagiarism of the plot, but unfortunately the …shameless aping of western modes of dress, of behaviour, the way of their songs and their dances, which are so servilely and slavishly copied in our films, with the result that the foreigners, who are seeing some of the Indian films, they say. ‘Are we seeing the reality of India or are we seeing a carbon copy of what goes on in the west?’(Transcript21)

However, Abbas was happy at the way the Western technique had been adopted by Indian film industry. He described it as a very healthy impact on Indian Cinema. It was the time when Neo-Realistic Cinema was gaining ground in Europe. The Indian