Satluj and politics of film censorship: growth of community screenings in India

A film named Rang de Basanti released in 2006, based on the political awakening of a disillusioned generation and their fight against corruption. One of the characters had a line that went like -

The screenplay was written by Prasoon Joshi, a writer and lyricist. A call to address the problem within institutions and that systems often absorb those who seek to challenge them. Two decades later, Joshi now chairs the Central Board of Film Certification, the very institution that has found itself at the centre of the controversy surrounding censorship of the film Satluj, the Honey Trehan-directed film based on the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra.

The irony is difficult to ignore. A latest chapter of a longer history.

The history of Indian cinema includes the films that were never to reach their audiences. In different decades, governments, censors and political groups have objected to films for reasons ranging from political criticism and obscenity to religion, caste and national security.

In 1975, Kissa Kursi Ka, Amrit Nahata's political satire widely seen as a critique of the Emergency regime, was banned and its prints were reportedly destroyed. Around the same period, Aandhi (1975) was pulled from theatres because of the protagonist's perceived resemblance to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Decades later, Lipstick under my burkha (2016) became the subject of legal battle, while Udta Punjab faced demands for extensive cuts over its portrayal of Punjab's drug crisis. More recently, Honey Trehan's Satluj, based on the life of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, found itself at the centre of controversy after questions were raised over its release and circulation.

Each of these films emerged from different political moments. Yet they raise a common question that extends beyond censorship itself: what happens to a film when its official path to the audience is interrupted?

The answer more often than not lies outside the theatres.

Across India's political and cinematic history, films that encountered resistance have repeatedly found alternative routes to viewers. Community halls, university campuses, trade union offices, places of worship, film societies and private gatherings have often become parallel spaces, keeping politically sensitive cinema alive after conventional distribution slowed or stopped.

The phenomenon predates the digital era. During the freedom movement, travelling exhibitions, mobile projectors and makeshift public screenings carried political messages to audiences beyond formal cinema halls.

Long before streaming platforms and multiplex chains defined film distribution, cinema in India travelled through people as much as through theatres. Parallel cinema and socially charged films frequently depended on these informal circuits when commercial exhibition remained limited. The audience was never merely a ticket-buyer; it became a participant in carrying stories from one community to another (a civic activity). The recent screenings are therefore not an entirely new phenomenon but part of a longer tradition of collective exhibition that has accompanied Indian cinema for decades. When institutional pathways narrow, communities often create new ones. In that sense, an alternative geography of cinema develops beyond the theatre, with places of worship, campuses and cultural organisations becoming temporary screens where contested histories continue to find an audience. Documentary filmmakers and independent directors increasingly relied on film societies, civil society organisations and campus networks to circulate works that struggled to find commercial screens. The journey of a film, in other words, has never been confined to multiplexes alone.

That pattern appears to be repeating itself with Satluj. Reports of community screenings in gurdwaras, organised gatherings and restricted public exhibitions under security arrangements suggest that the film is travelling through social networks . From Gurudwara Rakab Ji Saheb in Jammu to Gurudwara Saheb Amerpreet in Hyderabad, all opened free screenings for people across all faiths.

The venue itself becomes part of the story- a Gurudwara. Watching the film collectively transforms it from an individual act of consumption into a shared act of remembrance and discussion and social refuge.

For filmmakers, these alternative circuits are rarely a first choice. They emerge out of necessity. Yet many directors and producers have spoken over the years about how campus screenings, independent festivals, local cultural organisations and word-of-mouth networks often sustained films that received limited theatrical exposure. Audiences, too, become participants in the film's journey. This parallel circulation also changes the meaning of censorship. Restricting a film's mainstream release does not necessarily erase it from public life. A contested film begins to travel through communities rather than markets, through recommendation rather than promotion, and through collective gatherings rather than commercial exhibition. Its reach may become smaller, but its engagement often becomes deeper.

The debate over censorship, therefore, is not only about what is permitted on screen. It is equally about the routes cinema takes to reach society. Every controversy leaves behind another story.

If censorship attempts to regulate a film's visibility, India's long history of community screenings suggests that audiences have repeatedly found ways to keep difficult stories in circulation. Sometimes, the most enduring journey of a film begins only after it leaves the theatre behind.

Archival records of the Central Board of Film Certification from the 1960s to the 1990s show that official interventions ranged from references to communism and Cold War politics to scenes involving intimacy, nudity, religion and national identity. Even the film Neel Akasher Neeche by Mrinal Sen faced the similar trajectory for its socio-political theme. The language of objection changed with the decades, but the impulse to regulate what citizens should watch remained remarkably consistent.

Legal scholars have long argued that this blurs the distinction between certification and censorship. The Cinematograph framework envisages classification to help audiences make informed choices, yet public controversies have repeatedly transformed certification into a negotiation over morality, political sensitivity and memory. The result is that a film's journey is often determined not only by artistic merit or commercial viability, but by the public life it is expected to acquire once released.

It is precisely at this point that the story moves beyond the censor's office. Their circulation shifts from multiplex schedules to community networks, from commercial programming to collective organisation. In that sense, censorship does not merely interrupt a film's release; it redraws its map. The audience, too, ceases to be a passive consumer and becomes an active distributor, preserving not just a film, but the public conversation surrounding it.

The Story Continues

Perhaps the legacy of a censored or contested film is not the controversy it generates, but the routes it discovers. As Satluj continues to travel through gurdwaras and community-led screenings, it joins a longer tradition of Indian cinema that has repeatedly stepped outside exhibitions to find its audience.

Across the country, independent filmmakers are already reimagining what film distribution can look like. Bengali filmmaker Pradipta Bhattacharyya has deliberately taken Nadharer Bhela to community halls, art galleries and theatre spaces, arguing that meaningful cinema does not belong exclusively to the multiplexes. Director Ranjan Ghosh has similarly experimented with the call show model, carrying Adamya into colleges and small towns instead of waiting for commercial screenings. This suggest that alternative exhibition is no longer merely an economic compulsion; it is gradually becoming a practice.

That shift reframes the debate on censorship as well. A film's life is no longer measured only by the number of theatres or platforms that host it. Increasingly, it is also measured by the communities willing to organise a projector, rearrange a hall, open a place of worship or gather an audience because they believe the story deserves to be seen. The number of screens lose relevance when the film itself keeps moving.

In that sense, censorship may interrupt a film's official release, but it rarely determines its destination. Sometimes, the audience becomes the distributor, the exhibition space becomes an act of participation, and cinema returns to what it has always been —not simply a product to be consumed, but a collective public experience.