Because of their concerns over the film’s depiction of violence in the Indian police force, misogyny, and Islamophobia, Indian film censors have prevented the release of the highly regarded film Santosh.
Set in northern India, Santosh, written and directed by British-Indian Sandhya Suri, has received praise from all around the world for its depiction of a young widow who enlists in the police force and looks into the murder of a little Dalit girl.
Deeply ingrained misogyny, discrimination against Dalits, India’s lowest caste, once known as untouchables, and the normalization of police abuse and torture are all depicted in this unapologetic fictional depiction of the murkier aspects of the Indian police force. The film also grapples with the issue of sexual violence in India, particularly against lower caste women, and the rising tide of anti-Muslim prejudice in the country.
Santosh was widely praised when it premiered at the Cannes film festival. It received excellent reviews, including five stars from the Observer, which referred to it as a “phenomenal achievement,” and was the UK’s official submission for the Oscars’ international feature category. It also went on to be nominated for a Bafta for best debut feature this year. Shahana Goswami, the film’s star, just took home the Asian Film Awards’ best actress prize.
The entire cast is Indian, the movie was produced in India, and it is entirely in Hindi, which is the primary language of northern India. In order to shoot in India, the filmmakers had already submitted the script and had encountered no problems. The biggest movie theater chain in India agreed to distribute the movie in January as well.
However, censors on the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), a government agency that authorizes all motion picture releases, declined to certify Santosh because to worries over its unfavorable depiction of the police, therefore Indian audiences are unlikely to ever see it in theaters.
The film’s director and writer, Suri, called the censors’ decision “disappointing and heartbreaking.” “It was surprising for all of us because I didn’t feel that these issues were particularly new to Indian cinema or hadn’t been raised before by other films,” she said.
Suri said the censors had demanded a list radical cuts so lengthy and wide-ranging that they would be “impossible” to implement. She was unable to disclose the specifics of the censor’s demands due to legal restrictions, but she claimed that the list of deletions was lengthy—it spanned multiple pages—and that it raised issues with themes of police behavior and broader social issues that are intricately woven throughout the movie.
“It was very important to me that the film is released in India so I did try to figure out if there was a way to make it work,” said Suri. “But in the end it was just too difficult to make those cuts and have a film that still made sense, let alone stayed true to its vision.” Suri emphasised that while the film offered an uncompromising depiction of the police, “I don’t feel my film glorifies violence in a way that many other films focusing on the police have done. There’s nothing sensationalist about it.”
With movies and TV shows that deal with politically sensitive subjects frequently the target of hate campaigns and police cases, or removed by streaming services before their release, the censorship board’s decision comes at a time when India’s cultural landscape is perceived as being more closely monitored than ever.
Suri said that she had been “apprehensive” about the film’s release in India given the present situation, but she maintained that it was “vitally important” to her that the people who would be impacted by the problems in the movie could see it. It was the incident in 2012 of a women raped on a bus in Delhi, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, that had initially inspired her to make the film and she had collaborated with Indian non-government organisations when building up the story.
In India, police brutality and torture are well-documented problems. A 2020 Human Rights Watch report claims that Indian police frequently torture people and disregard arrest protocols with little to no accountability.
“Maybe there’s something about this film which is troubling in that everybody is morally compromised and there is no single hero,” she said. “I think that’s what might set it apart from other stories in Indian cinema which often show a maverick cop in a rotten system.”
Although there have been past depictions of police violence in Indian cinema, Suri questioned whether the censors were uneasy with Santosh’s extremely realistic portrayals in contrast to Bollywood’s and other Indian film industries’ frequently stylized structure.
The movie, which takes place in a made-up town in north India, has not received any response from Indian police officials. A request for comment has been sent to the CBFC. After the CBFC submits its report, there is no way to appeal or negotiate with them; the only way to challenge the issue is in court. However, Suri said she would still keep fighting to have the film available to Indian audiences.
“All my work has been about India; one film was deeply nostalgic, another was super beautiful and sensual,” she said, “Yes this one shows another face of the country. But there’s humanity in everybody in this film.”
