Why ‘Satluj’ stopped being just a film

THe police force ship's officer in Hindi movie house, as legendary, heroical or vigilante-like as he’s always been, is now also a character India protects like its wronged child. Or does the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), notorious for censoring more than certifying, take that one dialogue of the nocturnal vigilante avatar of Inspector Vijay in Tinnu Anand’s Shahenshah (1988) — “Rishtey mein toh hum tumhare baap lagte hain” — so seriously that it feels compelled to protect the police?Just this year, two films came into the spotlight when it was decided Indian audiences couldn’t watch them because the police looked unflattering in the story. The first is Sandhya Suri’s feted debut Santosh, which The Guardian calls “an unflinching fictional portrayal of the murkier side of the Indian police force, depicting deep-rooted misogyny, discrimination against Dalits – the lowest caste in India, previously known as untouchables – and the normalisation of mistreatment and torture by police officers”.The second, Honey Trehan’s Satluj, got blocked on Zee5 after being on the OTT platform for two days last week, prolonging a long censorship battle that rested on the vague assumption that the film’s public release could create a “law and order situation” in Punjab.The CBFC did not ban the movie; in fact, it did not give it the required certification. To be sure, an OTT release doesn’t require CBFC certification and the Zee5 release of Satluj seemed like a final step. Two days later, Zee5 blocked the film, saying it would be unavailable in India “until further notice” because of “current developments”.The film is being examined by the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC), under the information and broadcasting ministry (MIB), and constituted under Rule 14 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The committee forms part of the government's oversight mechanism for OTT platforms and digital publishers and can make recommendations to the Centre on complaints relating to online content.The FilmSatluj depicts the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, whom the Punjab Police abducted and murdered during the peak of insurgency in Punjab in the mid-1990s.Punjab 95 was later titled Satluj because the title was one of several problems the CBFC had with the film — it wanted 127 cuts, which, Trehan says, included all mentions of the words “Punjab”, “Punjab Police”, the name of the protagonist, and visuals of the Indian flag and scenes of police brutality.Trehan told me weeks before the Zee5 release: “We refused because with those cuts, the film we made based on a lot of research, wouldn’t be a film at all, forget the film we believed in.”For Trehan, a director — and casting director on numerous Bollywood films — this was a subject with deep personal resonance. He grew up in Tarn Taran district, witnessing how the Punjab Police, in the name of protecting the state from insurgents demanding a separate state of Khalistan, unleashed violence on young Punjabi men.Across Punjab, young men were picked up, brutalised, killed, and their bodies cremated surreptitiously. Some bodies were submerged in the Sutlej and other rivers. “We worked closely with Khalra’s family, shot at the primary school in Tarn Taran that I myself studied in. It is a deeply immersive project personally,” Trehan says.After completing the film, Trehan found support from Khalra’s family (his wife Parmjit, daughter Navkiran and son Janet), community groups in the state, and Rajvinder Singh Bains, the lawyer who fought the case.Trehan remembers vividly the silence that followed the screening of the film at Bains’ home. “He was speechless first because it was a story too close to him. And then he thanked us for doing justice to the story,” Trehan says.The CastSatluj’s hero is not extraordinary in the sense that he has any special power. He spent most of his life, after deciding to take up the cause of missing Punjabi men in the 1980s and 1990s, with papers and files.Trehan’s film has some fantastic acting by Diljit Dosanjh as Khalra, Arjun Rampal as a CBI officer, Geetika Vidya Ohlyan as Paramjit Kaur Khalra, Kanwaljit Singh as senior police officer DGP Bitta, and Suvinder Vicky as a morally bankrupt and trigger-happy police officer.The narrative is emotionally charged and gravely invested in the injustice of indiscriminate brutality against the people of the state. Some of its narrative tools are Macbethian.Even Mumbai’s film fraternity found Satluj absurdly out of reach. Bollywood insiders say that when many directors and actors were invited for a planned screening in 2023, the makers got threatening calls.Trehan doesn’t validate these allegations. “All I can say is, it has been a difficult journey, and I am prepared to fight for it if it takes an entire lifetime,” Trehan says.The ‘Box Office’Meanwhile, the film has been downloaded and re-downloaded. The link has travelled far on social media and WhatsApp. One of the actors, Vicky, who plays the role of a brutal policeman, has told the media that people are organising screenings of the film across Punjab in gurdwaras and community halls. Social media is already full of videos and testimonials of the emotional impact it has had on people who inherit the burden of the carnage that Khalra wanted to find justice for.Dosanjh, who has huge followings on social media and fans across the world, shared a reel soon after the film was blocked on Zee5. “My love and respect to all of you. What I had already expected is exactly what happened. I thought the film might get banned when [government] offices opened on Monday, but I didn’t know it would happen as early as Sunday evening.” This particular reel triggered widespread sharing of the downloaded film.CBFC and film censorship in IndiaFor a state body known for its bullish grip on Indian cinema across ages and under governments of different political ideologies and parties since Independence, the CBFC has remained silent in response to Satluj.The CBFC’s usual approach is to pre-empt offence. Aandhi (1975) bore a resemblance to then prime minister Indira Gandhi and her decision to impose the Emergency; it was banned. In 1994, Shekhar Kapur faced several challenges from the CBFC when his film Bandit Queen was due for release on grounds of nudity, rape and political violence.Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996) was banned in India because it was about a romantic relationship between two women. Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday (2004), Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha (2016), Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab (2016), in which Trehan was casting director and second unit director — all these films, and many others across Indian languages, have been CBFC targets.Film censorship in India is not new. While it meant a uni-directional coercion of the state during British rule, after Independence, with the setting up of the CBFC in 1951, censorship transformed into a multilaterally powerful body, acting as an arbiter and manipulator of popular perceptions about cinema.A lot of things, including sexuality and politics, are censorable. In recent times, the spirit of moral scorn and gatekeeping power that the CBFC represents has been especially acute. Satluj has become the outlier. It managed to override a CBFC challenge, transforming it into curiosity and viral downloads. It is now a symbol, more than a film.