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. 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.
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