Banned Film Satluj Draws Hundreds at Public Screenings as India’s Takedown Fuels Wider Sharing
Updated
Updated · NPR · Aug 16
Banned Film Satluj Draws Hundreds at Public Screenings as India’s Takedown Fuels Wider Sharing
3 articles · Updated · NPR · Aug 16
Summary
Hundreds have gathered at temple and street screenings of “Satluj” in Punjab after Indian authorities blocked the film from theaters and ordered it removed from streamer ZEE5 a day after its July release.
Security concerns drove the takedown: officials said the biopic’s depiction of police abuses could rekindle Sikh separatist sentiment, tied to Punjab’s violent insurgency era in the 1980s and 1990s.
Nearly 3 hours long, the film tells the story of activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, who used records to allege up to 25,000 extrajudicial killings before he was kidnapped in 1995 and disappeared.
The ban instead widened the audience, with bootleg copies spreading on WhatsApp and YouTube and organizers in one village saying they held half a dozen additional screenings.
The backlash has also fed rallies against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and renewed demands for accountability over historical state violence in Punjab.