For as long as he has been a film-maker, there is one story Honey Trehan has wanted to tell above all.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s modern history. Jaswant Singh Khalra, the activist who exposed the crimes and was murdered in the process, is a national hero.<\/p>\n
By 2022, Trehan\u2019s movie about Khalra and the crimes of Punjab police was completed under the title Ghallughara \u2013 a reference to a historical massacre of Sikhs \u2013 but the film would never reach Indian cinemas.<\/p>\n
For more than three years, India\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Diljit Dosanjh<\/a> portrays the human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra in Satluj. Photograph: YouTube<\/p>\n Trehan describes the ordeal of trying to get Satluj released as \u201cdystopian\u201d and decries \u201cundemocratic censorship\u201d and alleged political interference under the Narendra Modi government re-shaping India\u2019s film industries. He claims Indian cinema has been widely co-opted as a propaganda<\/a> arm for the government\u2019s rightwing, religious nationalist agenda, where there is \u201conly room for one kind of story to be told\u201d, particularly in mainstream Hindi films.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear to me that there is no creative freedom in India today,\u201d says Trehan. \u201cWhen 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?\u201d<\/p>\n Even today, discussions of Punjab\u2019s separatist movement \u2013 which raged in the 1980s and 1990s, fighting for an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan, before it was crushed by the state \u2013 remain highly sensitive for the Modi government.<\/p>\n Honey Trehan, pictured in 2016. Photograph: Ernesto Di Stefano Photography\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A ministry of information committee backed the ban on Satluj on the grounds that it lacked \u201cbalance\u201d and had \u201cwhitewashed\u201d the acts of Punjabi separatist militants, with the potential to incite national security issues.<\/p>\n \u201cShow Muslims in a bad light and your film will get a standing ovation in the parliament,\u201d says Trehan. \u201cBut if you dare to try and tell an uncomfortable part of our history, suddenly you are a criminal and a threat to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n Trehan is not the first Indian film-maker to fall foul of India\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what I\u2019ve experienced, the film board is hand in glove with the government,\u201d says Trehan. \u201cThey are being used as a backdoor entry to control the narrative of the film industry.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n