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Satluj: The Film That Was Pulled, The Politics That Was Born

It vanished without a trace. On a quiet weekend, ZEE5 quietly dropped the Punjabi film Satluj on its OTT platform, and within hours, it was gone. No official order, no public reasoning—just the silent erasure of a cinematic work that had already waited four years to see the light of day. This is the story of a film, of course, but also of a state that is being relentlessly pushed to remember its wounds, while those who govern calculate how to turn memory into a vote bank. Once again, a film is not just a film. It is a matchstick thrown into a tinderbox called Punjab.

The Vanishing Act

The title itself carries a tortured history. Initially named Gallu Gara (Punjabi for “genocide”), it was forced to change to Punjab 95 and then, finally, to Satluj. The film revolves around Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist who exposed the extrajudicial killings carried out by the Punjab Police during the dark days of the militancy era. He was abducted and murdered in 1995. His wife, Paramjit Kaur Khalra, has alleged that the officers involved were rewarded with promotions under subsequent Akali governments. The film did not seek to incite; it sought to document. Yet, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had ordered 127 cuts, and when the producers refused to bow, the film was denied a theatrical certificate. They finally released it directly on ZEE5 under the new name. On 10 August 2025, it appeared. By 11 August, it had been pulled. Government sources told ANI that the film did not have the requisite certificate, and the ministry concerned asked ZEE5 to take it down. The document of that instruction, however, remains as invisible as the film itself.

The Bittu-Dosanjh Conundrum

To understand the stakes, one must first observe the bewildering flip-flop surrounding Diljit Dosanjh, the actor who plays Khalra in the film. In January 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Diljit, posted a photograph, and described him as “a confluence of talent and tradition.” Flash forward to the film’s release, and suddenly Union Minister of State for Railways and Food Processing, Ravneet Singh Bittu, calls Diljit an “imposter” who “bats in Los Angeles to make money” and makes films on “vulgar songs.” Bittu, who lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Ludhiana and was then rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat from Rajasthan and a ministerial berth, seems to have forgotten that when Diljit’s Sardar 3 released in June 2025, the BJP’s national spokesperson R.P. Singh hailed him as a “national asset.” The same Diljit is now a fraud. The same meeting that was the government’s public relations coup is now an inconvenient memory.

What caused this about-turn? Bittu is the grandson of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, who was assassinated in a bomb blast in 1995. Beant Singh’s tenure saw the elevation of K.P.S. Gill as Punjab’s police chief—a figure whose role remains deeply contested, with one section calling him a hero and another a villain, while a third simply demands that the full truth of police excesses be recorded and discussed. Bittu, once a Congressman close to Rahul Gandhi, is now said to enjoy the patronage of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. His sudden attack on the film suggests a political script being written from Delhi, not Chandigarh.

The Political Chessboard: Who Gains from the Chaos?

The film’s removal did not silence it; it amplified it. In villages across Punjab, gurdwaras have begun screening Satluj. Sukhbir Singh Badal’s Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has instructed its cadre to organise screenings so that “the current generation learns how the barbaric Congress governments suppressed Khalra and thousands of innocent Sikh youth.” The Akalis, desperate to reclaim relevance after their split with the BJP and the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), are riding the wave. But there are cross-currents. Paramjit Kaur Khalra herself contested elections in 1999 on the ticket of the Sarv Hind Shiromani Akali Dal, a breakaway faction, and in 2019 on the Punjab Ekta Party ticket. The political players are numerous and tangled.

Meanwhile, Ravneet Singh Bittu’s newfound aggression coincides with murmurs in Punjab’s political circles that the BJP is preparing to use the film’s controversy to wedge open the Sikh community’s faultlines. The memory of the Amritpal Singh phenomenon still smoulders. Amritpal, the radical preacher currently lodged in Dibrugarh jail under the Assam government (a BJP-ruled state), won the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as an independent from Khadoor Sahib, along with another independent, Sarabjit Singh, son of Indira Gandhi’s assassin Beant Singh. Amritpal’s supporters call him “Bhindranwale 2.0,” and his lawyer is Rajdev Singh Khalsa, a former MP linked to the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat—often described as the RSS’s Sikh wing. In 2023, Amritpal’s mob stormed Ajnala police station to free his associates. The deep state’s shadow players do not retire; they change disguises.

Even Deep Sidhu, the actor-activist who founded Waris Punjab De, died in 2022, but his political imprint remains. His supporters hoisted the Nishan Sahib at the Red Fort during the farmers’ protest, and his organisation later allied with the Akali Dal. The film’s controversy seems designed to fracture the moderate Sikh voter base, creating a churn that benefits those who thrive on polarization. The BJP’s earlier demand for the film’s release—remember R.P. Singh’s statement that blocking it was “continuing the suppression of Sardars”?—has now been replaced by Bittu’s full-throated opposition. This is not inconsistency; it is strategy.

A Pattern of Cinematic Politics

Let there be no confusion: the Modi government knows how to deploy cinema as an electoral instrument. The pattern is now unmistakable.

Film	Timing of Release / Controversy	Government’s Role	Outcome
The Kashmir Files	March 2022, months before UP elections	Screened in Parliament; PM Modi, ministers endorsed it; BJP cadres mobilized	Fanned communal polarization, contributed to BJP’s UP victory
The Kerala Story	May 2023, ahead of Karnataka elections	PM Modi cited it in rallies; state governments made it tax-free; BJP leaders hosted screenings	Became a campaign tool, though BJP lost Karnataka; communal atmosphere heightened
The Bengal Files	2023, before West Bengal panchayat polls	BJP leaders promoted; party used it to target Mamata Banerjee	Sharpened Hindu-minority narrative in Bengal
Satluj (formerly Punjab 95)	August 2025, ahead of Punjab assembly polls (2026)	Pulled from OTT; minister attacks actor; BJP earlier demanded release, now opposes	Film goes viral in villages; Akali Dal and others exploit; Sigh community polarization deepens
The Sabarmati Report	2025, produced with BJP backing	Screened in Parliament with full cabinet present	Continues the narrative of Hindu victimhood, justifies 2002 riots

Each of these films was promoted with the full machinery of the ruling party. WhatsApp groups hummed with “must watch” messages. Chief ministers and ministers flocked to theatres. The PM himself used them as rhetorical ammunition. The Sabarmati Report, which rewrites the Godhra carnage as a premeditated terror conspiracy, was even shown in Parliament. But when a film dares to document the state’s own violence against Sikhs—a community the BJP has long wooed—it is abruptly pulled, its certificate questioned, its actor insulted.

The Ghosts of Punjab’s Past: Khalra, KPS Gill, and Unhealed Wounds

Jaswant Singh Khalra’s investigation into custodial deaths shook the establishment. He filed writ petitions, gathered cremation records, and demonstrated that hundreds of young Sikhs were being cremated as “unidentified” by the police. He was killed. His wife Paramjit Kaur has repeatedly stated that the officers responsible were later promoted by Parkash Singh Badal’s Akali government. This is not a tale of one-party villainy; it is a bipartisan saga of brutality covered by political convenience. K.P.S. Gill, the celebrated “supercop,” is both deified and demonized. The film does not glorify militancy; it simply holds up a mirror to the state’s violence. Yet the CBFC’s 127 cuts suggest that the state still cannot bear that reflection.

The official reason for pulling the film from OTT is that it lacked a censor certificate for online release. But the film had already been scheduled for the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and was withdrawn after the Indian government objected. No uproar then. The uproar now is not about certification; it is about the electoral season. Punjab votes for a new assembly in 2026. The memories of 1984, of the anti-Sikh pogrom, of the Khalistan militancy, of the police excesses of the 1990s—these are not just history; they are combustible material waiting for a spark. The film is the spark, but the arsonist is in Delhi.

The Hypocrisy of Selective Censorship

Ask any filmmaker: the censor board’s scissors are flexible. A film that paints Muslims as terrorists and Hindus as victims gets a red-carpet rollout, tax exemptions, and prime ministerial endorsements. A film that shows a Sikh human rights activist uncovering state-sanctioned murder gets 127 cuts and is forced into a bureaucratic limbo. When the producers bypass the board and release it digitally, it is dragged back into the shadows. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has now formed a high-level inter-departmental committee to examine the matter—but the official order to take down the film has still not been produced publicly. Everything is sourced from unnamed officials, a classic technique to avoid accountability.

The government’s supporters will argue that Satluj could revive separatist sentiments. Yet the film has been seen in villages and gurdwaras across Punjab, and not a single incident of violence has been reported. The real fear, it seems, is not of violence but of votes. The Sikh voter, bruised by decades of trauma, might finally see the grand narrative of Hindu-Sikh unity as a transactional myth. The BJP, which has struggled to make inroads in Punjab without the Akali crutch, needs a fractured electorate. A polarizing film controversy could split the moderate Sikh vote, weaken the Akali Dal, and create space for radical alternatives—some of which, like Waris Punjab De, have RSS-linked legal defence. The fire is lit not to burn down a house, but to clear the ground for a new one.

A State in Distress: The Real Issues Ignored

While politicians and news anchors obsess over a film, Punjab is gasping. The state has an unemployment rate that regularly tops national charts. Agriculture, the backbone of Punjab, is in perpetual crisis, with farmers crushed by debt and the collapse of the MSP regime. Drug addiction has hollowed out entire villages; youth are fleeing to Canada, the UK, Australia, and the US, often through dangerous illegal routes. Just a day before the Satluj controversy erupted, news broke that two Punjab-origin gangsters, operating from Indian jails, were running extortion rackets targeting Punjabi diaspora families in America. The US is deporting young Punjabi men in handcuffs and leg chains. These are the stories that should dominate political discourse. Instead, the state’s ruling class chooses to exhume the ghosts of the 1990s, not to heal but to harvest.

Professor Harminder Singh Bhatti, speaking on a Punjabi YouTube channel, lamented that the repeated “pin pricks” of such controversies are meant to emotionally blackmail the community, to keep old wounds open so that political operators can pick at them. He asked, “Why this time? Why this song?” The answer is the election cycle. The targeting of Diljit Dosanjh—a global icon who has never been associated with extremism—is a message: even the most beloved cultural figures will be attacked if they refuse to be instruments of the state’s narrative.

The Smoke Before the Fire

On 17 July, Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to visit Punjab. The signals he sends—or withholds—will be crucial. Will he acknowledge the film? Will he reprimand Bittu’s outburst? Or will his silence be the loudest signal of all? The controversy has already achieved one thing: it has drawn a line under the present and forced Punjab to look back. Back at the Bittu grandfather’s tenure, back at the Badal government’s complicity, back at the Congress’s role in Operation Blue Star and the 1984 massacres, back at the Akali-BJP alliance’s expedient politics. Everyone has blood on their hands, and everyone now sees a chance to wash theirs by pointing at someone else’s.

The film’s removal from an OTT platform did not suppress it; it distributed it. Diljit, in an Instagram live, said he had not even promoted the release because he feared it would be blocked. Now he urged people, “Share the film link, please! Whoever has my movie link, share it.” And they are sharing it. In gurdwaras, in village squares, on encrypted groups, Satluj is now being watched by those who would have never gone to a multiplex. The government’s heavy-handedness has turned a small digital release into a mass movement of memory.

There is a cynical brilliance in this. A film that may have gone unnoticed becomes a political weapon the moment it is banned. The BJP, which is already out of power in Punjab and discredited after the farmers’ protest, does not need to win the next election; it only needs to ensure that the Akali Dal does not recover and that the Sikh vote splits further. The film controversy helps create exactly such a schism. Even if the BJP is blamed for censorship, the bigger game is the communal polarization it triggers. A section of the Sikh community, feeling embattled, may gravitate toward more radical politics, and that radical fringe, when nurtured in the laboratory of a ruling party’s intelligence agencies, can be used as a permanent bogey to justify central dominance. It is the oldest story in the subcontinent: wound a community, then offer to bandage it. Only this time, the wound has a name: Satluj.

Punjab’s rivers are in spate, as they were last year when a devastating flood swept away homes and fields. But the real deluge is of a different kind—a flood of memories, deliberately released. Who will survive this flood? The answer lies not in a film, but in the voting booth. And those who are orchestrating this tragedy know it better than anyone.

Criticisms

The following criticisms are expressed directly, in passive voice, addressing the actions of public figures, governments, and political entities.

• The Modi government is criticized for its strategic exploitation of cinema as a tool of communal polarization and electoral manipulation.
• The BJP is accused of a glaring double standard, promoting films that vilify Muslims while suppressing a documentary-like narrative of state atrocities against Sikhs.
• Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu is condemned for his sudden virulent attack on Diljit Dosanjh, described earlier by his own party as a national asset.
• The Central Board of Film Certification is faulted for imposing 127 cuts on a historically significant film, effectively blocking its release and then blaming the producers for bypassing the process.
• The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is criticized for pulling the film from OTT without a public, written order, relying instead on anonymous sources to justify censorship.
• The Akali Dal is criticized for attempting to exploit the film’s controversy for political rehabilitation, despite a documented history of rewarding officers implicated in extrajudicial killings during the militancy era.
• All major parties, including Congress and AAP, are faulted for remaining silent on the deeper questions of police brutality and human rights violations that the film raises, preferring to indulge in competitive victimhood.
• The media is criticized for amplifying the film’s removal as a spectacle while ignoring Punjab’s grinding crises of unemployment, farmer distress, drug abuse, mass migration, and extortion rackets.
• Political leaders are criticized for reopening the wounds of the 1980s and 1990s not to seek truth or reconciliation, but to carve vote banks from a traumatized population.
• The Prime Minister’s silence on his own minister’s inflammatory remarks is criticized as a tacit endorsement of the politics of hate and division.
• The security establishment is criticized for consistently blocking films that scrutinize state violence while facilitating the screening of politically convenient narratives within Parliament itself.

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