In the second week of July, hundreds in Bandala village in the Indian state of Punjab attended the screening of Satluj, a film blocked by the Indian government on grounds of "national security."
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AMRITSAR, India — On a muggy monsoon evening, farmers in the northern Indian village of Bandala finished tending to their rice and sugarcane crop and flocked to the local Sikh temple. They settled in plastic chairs, women to the front, men to the back, as volunteers served strawberry juice in plastic cups and kids bustled around, happy to have an excuse to stay up late.
They were gathered for an unlikely event: the screening of a film that was never granted a theatrical release certificate by Indian censors, and pulled from a streaming platform a day after its release online. The Indian government has not revealed its reasons for the blocking. India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting did not reply to NPR's interview requests.
There was little sign of the film's contraband nature in the promotional posters plastered all over the village shopfronts and playground walls. They advertised the movie, titled Satluj, as based on real-life events that addressed the history and identity of Sikhs, a religious minority within India numbering more than 20 million people and forming a majority in the northern state of Punjab.
This photograph taken on July 15 shows villagers watching the film Satluj during a community-led screening at the Gurudwara Singh Sabha in Punjab's Gurdaspur city. Across Punjab, Sikh religious bodies and political groups have been hosting Satluj film screenings in temple courtyards, community halls and village squares with viewer numbers swelling.
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Satluj is a biopic of Jaswant Singh Khalra, an activist who was killed after uncovering extrajudicial killings carried out by security forces, primarily the Punjab police. This occurred after the separatist movement turned violent in 1984, when the Indian army stormed and damaged the Golden Temple, one of the holiest shrines for Sikhs, during a gunfight with militants that had sought refuge there. The following decade witnessed several killings of civilians, militants and state officials, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguard.
Ordinarily, Satluj would have joined the long list of films that the Indian government has blocked, or forced directors to tone down in recent years. But the ostensible banning of Satluj triggered something else: rare defiance against the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In cities and villages across Punjab, Sikh leaders urged their community to watch it. In its spiritual capital Amritsar, activists and political parties staged rallies opposing the ban. Many organized screenings in Sikh temple courtyards and public streets. Others downloaded bootleg copies and shared them on WhatsApp and YouTube.
Such pushback against the state's diktats is quite unusual, says Sanjay Srivastava, a sociologist at SOAS University of London. "It does reflect a genuine feeling on the ground that the issues covered in the film have not been entirely resolved," he says.
After the Indian government blocked the screening of Satluj, Sikh religious groups and civil society organizations in Amritsar district rallied in support of the film in the second week of July.
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Satluj is set during the '90s, a few years after a Sikh separatist movement had turned militant. Thousands of Sikhs died in clashes and gunfights with Indian security forces. Many fled to countries like the U.S. and Canada and sought asylum.
Sarabjit Singh Verka, a lawyer with the nonprofit Punjab Human Rights Organisation in Amritsar, has represented many victims of the violence. He says Indian authorities back then were desperate to end the violence. "Some police officers on trial confessed to me in private that they were allowed to kill militants who had killed two or more people," says Verka. "The police called the policy 'bullet for bullet'."
This carte blanche, Verka says, started because civilians were often too scared to testify against militants in the court, which allowed many to go free. "But some officers turned this into an extortion racket. They would kidnap young men and demand ransom from their families. Some also staged shootouts and cremated bodies to cover up the evidence."
Amid this violence in the 1990s, Amritsar resident Jaswant Singh Khalra quit his job at a local bank to document such killings. In Satluj, one of India's top stars, Diljit Dosanjh, plays his role.
Using municipal and crematorium records, Khalra compiled a list of around 2,000 youths that he claimed the police had killed in his home district of Amritsar. He then approached the Punjab High Court and the Supreme Court, claiming the toll across the state of Punjab could be up to 25,000.
