Why is India banning the film of the man who accounted for the Punjab terrorists? | | Censorship News

Indian authorities are investigating whether a film based on separatist insurgency in the Indian state of Punjab in the 1980s and early 1990s is worth watching.

Satluj, as the film is called a river in Punjab, claims to be telling the truth about Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who was tortured and killed by the police in 1995 for investigating thousands of disappearances and arbitrary killings during the government’s brutal crackdown on the separatist movement.

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The film was titled Punjab 95, and the film was blocked by the Indian censors for three years. The board ordered the film’s title to be changed and required the film to be cut about 130 times before it was allowed to be released.

The filmmakers refused to make the cut and instead released Satluj on the ZEE5 platform on July 3, only to have it removed 48 hours later due to security concerns.

Look at the argument.

What is Satluj?

Written and directed by Honey Trehan, the 163-minute biopic is based on the life – and murder – of Khalra, a bank employee in the city of Amritsar in Punjab, who begins to investigate the disappearance of his friend and the friend’s mother, and ends up finding thousands of similar cases.

The disappearance – and the presumed murder – was part of a larger crackdown by the Indian military to crush a separatist group seeking to establish Khalistan, an independent Sikh state in Punjab.

Khalra’s research says police secretly cremated nearly 25,000 missing persons without informing their families or keeping records.

He continued his search despite threats and warnings, until he was picked up outside his house on September 6, 1995. He was thought to have been killed, although his body was never found. He was 42 years old.

After Khalra was killed in their hands, his wife, Paramjit, campaigned for justice, forcing the government to order an investigation by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the crimes. Five police officers are serving life imprisonment for Khalra’s murder.

The film is narrated by an actor who plays a police officer who heads a CBI investigation.

Diljit Dosanjh, one of the Indian film stars, plays Khalra. The film received positive reviews, with critics calling it one of the most powerful films made in India in recent years.

What is Khalistan and what happened in Punjab?

The Khalistan insurgency was one of the bloodiest independence conflicts in India in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The separatist movement was founded on long-standing political and religious grievances over Sikh identity, demands for state autonomy, disputes over the sharing of river water with other countries, and excessive Western control of the border with Pakistan.

Armed Sikh militants carried out bombings, massacres, and massacres, while the police and army launched a major operation against those involved in the movement. According to human rights groups, the operation included torture, summary executions, enforced disappearances, and clandestine cremation.

In the summer of 1984, Indian troops entered the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest site, which at the time was occupied by separatist forces. Operation Blue Star, as it was called, left hundreds dead.

Later that year, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh bodyguards, who assigned her the responsibility of shedding blood at the Temple Mount. Gandhi’s assassination sparked anti-Sikh riots, with thousands of Sikhs killed in Punjab and India’s capital, New Delhi, in what Sikh groups say is genocide.

Sikh militants responded by killing General Arun Kumar Vaidya, the military commander who oversaw the bombing of the Golden Temple, in 1986. They also killed members of parliament, who were believed to be responsible for the anti-Sikh violence of the mid-1980s.

In 1994, the militants killed the then Governor of Punjab, Surendar Nath, and the Chief Minister Beant Singh the following year.

Violence subsided significantly in the 90s, but several Sikh groups in India and abroad are still accused by India of separatism.

Who was Jaswant Singh Khalra?

The story of Khalra, a human rights activist, living in the midst of violence and unrest in Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s.

He investigated urban cremation records and said police had secretly cremated 25,000 unidentified bodies, based on his investigation, without telling families or following proper laws.

“Khalra was not a trained human rights activist. He was just a young man who joined the protest movement because he saw wrongdoing happening before his eyes,” Jupinderjit Singh, a journalist from Punjab who has covered violence in the state, told Al Jazeera.

“It was a natural resistance against oppression, and Khalra became a symbol of that,” he added.

“And the impact of this film is huge; it has shaken Punjab to its core and reopened wounds that the government thought were done,” added Singh, who saw the film last year at a private screening.

“The image of the police has had a big impact.”

Why is the government banning this film?

Although the insurgency in Punjab was crushed, and Khalistan’s support for the government diminished, the Indian government continues to view separatism as a matter of national security.

It has not publicly explained why the film was removed, but officials have told reporters that they ordered the removal for security reasons.

A report by the Press Trust of India this week said that the government has also set up a committee to review why the ban on the film on the ZEE5 platform should continue. According to media reports citing sources, the committee agreed with the ban and concluded that the film was “against Indian sovereignty”.

In a statement, ZEE5 said the film will not be released in India “until further notice” due to “current developments”, without elucidating or explaining it. It added that it would explore “any appropriate means through appropriate channels” to restore it.

Actor Dosanjh took to Instagram after the film was pulled from ZEE5 and told his fans that his worst fear has come true.

Dosanjh seemed frustrated by the hurdles the film faced over the years. But he said he also found solace in the fact that he is now appearing in public shows across the country, and is being downloaded and shared widely.

“Nothing can stop this film now,” he said.

The Indian film industry has been facing a lot of problems since the Hindu Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.

Critics say his government has been targeting “fake” right-wing films, making them tax-free, while banning and banning independent films that criticize and question the government.

How do people watch a banned film?

Social media users are uploading the film on YouTube and other platforms in defiance of the government ban. One link goes down, another goes up within minutes.

Across Punjab and other parts of India, Sikh groups and activists have also converted Sikh temple buildings and village halls into staging areas to organize public demonstrations on the Satluj.

Community screenings are free, with locals bringing home-made butter and handing out soft drinks and snacks.

At one such screening in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district, Inderpal Bains told Al Jazeera that he was able to watch the film after a long wait. For him, the biopic is a “terrible reflection of reality”.

“This film is about our pain and the difficult stories that our parents and grandparents faced in Punjab,” he said. “The government is also hiding the evidence of our suffering.”

Similar observations were reported from Sikh diaspora groups in London, New York, and Toronto.

“No generation should forget its history, no matter how painful it is,” Bains said. “What’s left for us if we don’t know how we got here?”