‘A revolutionary act to watch it’: the film India’s censors do not want you to see

A Punjab screening of Trehan’s film Satluj, which was only released online due to censors’ opposition, and was then banned outright within 48 hours. Photograph: Prabhjot Gill/APView image in fullscreenA Punjab screening of Trehan’s film Satluj, which was only released online due to censors’ opposition, and was then banned outright within 48 hours. Photograph: Prabhjot Gill/AP‘A revolutionary act to watch it’: the film India’s censors do not want you to seeDirector Honey Trehan decries ‘dystopian’ opposition to his film depicting crackdown on Punjab’s separatist movementFor as long as he has been a film-maker, there is one story Honey Trehan has wanted to tell above all.

Growing up in the Indian state of Punjab, Trehan saw firsthand the devastation wrought by police who carried out tens of thousands of killings and illegal cremations in the 1990s, as they cracked down on a separatist insurgency. To those in Punjab, the period remains one of the darkest in India’s modern history. Jaswant Singh Khalra, the activist who exposed the crimes and was murdered in the process, is a national hero.

By 2022, Trehan’s movie about Khalra and the crimes of Punjab police was completed under the title Ghallughara – a reference to a historical massacre of Sikhs – but the film would never reach Indian cinemas.For more than three years, India’s film censorship board, which must approve all cinematic releases, blocked the film from release. When it was finally launched straight to a streaming platform last week, under a new title, Satluj, it was taken down within 48 hours and banned on government orders as a threat to national security.

View image in fullscreenDiljit Dosanjh portrays the human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra in Satluj. Photograph: YouTubeTrehan describes the ordeal of trying to get Satluj released as “dystopian” and decries “undemocratic censorship” and alleged political interference under the Narendra Modi government re-shaping India’s film industries. He claims Indian cinema has been widely co-opted as a propaganda arm for the government’s rightwing, religious nationalist agenda, where there is “only room for one kind of story to be told”, particularly in mainstream Hindi films.

“It is clear to me that there is no creative freedom in India today,” says Trehan. “When you see the level of censorship happening, films getting blocked by the film board and banned from release, it makes you question: does democracy exist in this country any more?”Even today, discussions of Punjab’s separatist movement – which raged in the 1980s and 1990s, fighting for an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan, before it was crushed by the state – remain highly sensitive for the Modi government.

View image in fullscreenHoney Trehan, pictured in 2016. Photograph: Ernesto Di Stefano Photography/Getty ImagesA ministry of information committee backed the ban on Satluj on the grounds that it lacked “balance” and had “whitewashed” the acts of Punjabi separatist militants, with the potential to incite national security issues.“Show Muslims in a bad light and your film will get a standing ovation in the parliament,” says Trehan.

“But if you dare to try and tell an uncomfortable part of our history, suddenly you are a criminal and a threat to national security.”Trehan is not the first Indian film-maker to fall foul of India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in recent years. The body is legally mandated to be independent, but it has faced growing accusations by those in the industry of pushing an agenda aligned with the Hindu nationalist politics of the Modi government.

The CBFC has not responded to the allegation and was not available for comment.“From what I’ve experienced, the film board is hand in glove with the government,” says Trehan. “They are being used as a backdoor entry to control the narrative of the film industry.”

Film-makers have complained of an opaque process in which films that make any reference to government oppression, certain religions, police brutality or caste violence are blocked by censors or face demands to make impossible cuts. Film-makers have even been told to cut images of meat in films, to avoid offending Hindus.There is no official figure for the number of films that have languished due to censor demands.

One recent example was Santosh, which debuted at Cannes to acclaim but was blocked by the CBFC for its negative portrayal of police. Writers and directors privately acknowledge that self-censorship has become a norm in the industry in order to ensure their movies get a cinema release, and not lose huge sums in profits.View image in fullscreenIndian censors demanded that Trehan make 127 cuts and changes to Satluj, including removing anything that showed the police in a ‘bad light’.

Composite: IMDBMeanwhile, Bollywood films with an alleged pro-government slant such as The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story, which some have accused of telling a highly distorted version of historical events – and of