A film on socialist messiah Jayaprakash Narayan featuring events critical to former prime minister Indira Gandhi has been cleared by the censor board just weeks after the government refused to air it on its television channel.

Filmmaker Prakash Jha said he felt vindicated after the autonomous Central Board of Film Certification cleared his film on Narayan without a single cut - despite the state-owned broadcaster raising objections on its content.

"The censor board has cleared it without a single cut or change. Now the government should not have any problems in airing it," tells Jha.

"Let us see if they have the courage. If my film is still not shown, then I will have no option but to move the court to secure my creative rights."

He marvelled that one arm of the government, the state-owned broadcaster Prasar Bharati, had refused to telecast the film without cuts and changes, while the censor board had passed it.

"So who is the boss? Who decides the fate of my film, now that it is legally on strong ground?"

Jha was asked earlier this month to make about a dozen "politically correct" changes in his film, a bio-pic on then political stalwart Narayan, who formed an opposition front against then prime minister Indira Gandhi and her repressive emergency rule of 1975.

Indira Gandhi, the mother-in-law of Sonia Gandhi -- the president of the ruling Congress party -- had at the time imprisoned scores of political opponents and imposed severe curbs on the media, a dark period in India's democratic history that the Congress party has still to live down.

The film was cleared when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- whose top leaders were among the victims of the emergency rule -- was still in power in New Delhi. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was unseated by a Congress-led regime in the April-May general election.

In a letter, Prasar Bharati asked Jha to make several changes in the film, commissioned by the department of culture and made at a cost of Rs.9 million for viewing on the Oct 11 birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan.

Prasar Bharati told Jha that the latter half of the film "does not portray a balanced presentation of events of those times, and in view of the sensitivities involved the programme needs modifications".

It had asked Jha to give his opinion for final approval before Nov 1. But after receiving the letter, the filmmaker submitted the film to the censor board as a matter of routine, to secure a film certification.

"I decided to test whether the censor board objects to my film. But it did not."