Perpetuating an infantile culture

It's a bit tricky to want to be considered as 'Vishwaguru' and, at the same time, be scared of one's own shadow. And, yet, India circa 2026 seems to happily straddle this paradox. The ban on Diljit Dosanjh's film Satluj - the original title 'Ghallughara', a Punjabi Sikh term for 'massacre', and the subsequent one, 'Punjab 95', being too frightening for the Indian state's board of film certification - continues the tradition of treating the populace as too-easily-influenced children, rather than grown-ups. Instead of ensuring that the law is not broken by people using the excuse of different, even unsavoury, points of view 'offending sensibilities', the SOP of shutting the 'possibly offending' content down has been trotted out once again. Within 48 hrs of its release, Satluj was yanked from ZEE5 on GoI's orders, citing that old chestnut 'security concerns'. Why? Because of a dramatisation of the crusade of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra - himself a victim of murder by members of the Punjab Police - against enforced disappearances in Punjab.

The freedom of expression, especially of unsavoury views, is the bedrock of a free society. The US, for all its flaws, won't shut down, say, an anti-Vietnam War movie or a documentary critical of someone as thin-skinned as Donald Trump. That is something to admire. To pull the plug on storylines deemed 'statutorily unsuitable' points to a culture - not just governments down the line - that is inherently nervous handling critique. This is censorship masquerading as prudence.

Democracy thrives on the ability of cinema, art, literature to provoke, unsettle and force reflection. To silence Satluj is to take the proverbial 'patli gali' and perpetuate an infantile culture in the name of 'statism'.