There is no escaping film censorship in India – ‘Santosh’ is only the latest example

British filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s acclaimed drama Santosh was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 and chosen to represent the United Kingdom in the Best International Feature Film category later that year. Set in an unidentified North Indian town and starring Shahana Goswami in the lead role, Santosh has travelled widely – except to the country in which it is set, and which it powerfully examines.

Santosh was to be streamed on Lionsgate Play on October 15. The release has now been indefinitely stalled. “It was announced and now we’re un-announcing, so a lot more people are going to watch it in some other form,” Suri told the American trade publication Deadline.

A search on the streaming platform yields nothing. A similar search on Prime Video, which also hosts Lionsgate Play, leads to the 1989 melodrama of the same name.

This is the Hindi movie’s second run-in with censorship. Santosh was previously aiming for a theatrical release in India in March. But the Central Board of Film Certification demanded numerous cuts, which Suri refused to carry out, according to reports.

“Legal restrictions prevented her [Suri] sharing exact details of the censor’s demands, but she said that the list of cuts was so long it had gone on for several pages, and included concerns about themes relating to police conduct and wider societal problems which are deeply baked into the film.” the Guardian reported in March.

Suri’s feature debut stars Goswami as the eponymous police constable, who is attached to an investigation into a Dalit girl’s brutal rape and murder. Although a young Muslim man is picked up for the crime, Santosh’s own findings point elsewhere.

It’s not hard to guess what riled the CBFC, more aptly referred to as the censor board. Santosh highlights the pervasive prejudice against minorities, particularly Muslims, the unbridled power given to the police to harass or torture suspects, the corruption that leads to shoddy investigations, and casual sexism. Through the character of the police officer played by Sunita Rajwar, Santosh learns that authority is never neutral but coloured by caste, religion and gender.

In an interview with Scroll in March, Suri said that Santosh carries a “feeling of care for India”. Suri was born in the United Kingdom to Indian parents. Her documentaries, including I For India (2005) and Around India with a Movie Camera (2008), reflect her deep and thoughtful engagement with her Indian heritage.

Santosh emerged out of Suri’s need to “do a film about violence against women” and “talk about places where violence is a casual, normal thing”, she told Scroll.

The inability of Lionsgate Play to screen Santosh is a reminder of how censorship is eating away at streaming platforms after desiccating movies intended for a release in cinemas. Although films premiered directly on steaming platforms don’t need to be cleared in the same way as their theatrical counterparts, they are now being subjected to the same rules.

“The objections I had to cuts for the theatrical release remain my objections for a streaming release,” Suri told Deadline. “The streamers don’t need, by law, to have censorship status to show films. But perhaps this is about an environment in which streamers take on certain objections of their own accord for a harmonious universe.”

The humourless headmaster

The censor board stands between the film that is intended by its creators and the film that audiences eventually watch. Broad, spurious notions of public order, decency and national interest are offered to justify the censorship of cinema. From the duration of kisses to the expression of political beliefs, the censor board has often behaved like the ruler-wielding, humourless headmaster who prowls the corridors of schools for signs of inappropriate behaviour.

A film cannot be shown in cinemas without a censor certificate. The censor board’s excisions are expected to be implemented even when they are unnecessary or arbitrary.

There is limited wiggle room. Producers keen on avoiding trouble and added costs agree to cuts. Filmmakers build restraint into their narratives.

Political themes have all but vanished from cinema. Movies that portray injustice against minorities, particularly Muslims – the target of demonisation by the current regime – are increasingly impossible to make, let alone be released.

Films and shows on streaming platforms don’t come under the censor board’s ambit. Instead, they are governed by guidelines issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which also controls the censor board.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India has been tasked with self-regulating streaming content. A Digital Content Complaints Council watches over movies and series that land up on streaming platforms, supposedly monitoring allegedly obscene content but ultimately blocking material that critiques the government’s agenda.

Why should the censor board close a door to films targetting cinemas while opening it for films opting for streaming? The government has addressed this anomaly, which was seen as an escape route by creators, by slamming the door on everybody.

There is no escaping film censorship in India, as the Santosh experience has proved. Whether in the theatre or at home, censorship has wormed its way in, seeking to infect viewing habits and minds.

The shattered promise of streaming

When the likes of Netflix and Prime Video were launched in India nearly a decade ago, many hopeful things were said about them.

They will revolutionise storytelling, it was claimed. They will challenge the star system that blocks creative risk-taking, it was claimed. They will show films free from the fear of censorship, it was claimed. The last point was particularly attractive to creators throttled by the censor board’s diktats.

In the beginning – and it now seems so long ago – filmmakers had it good. It was assumed that in the privacy of the home, adults paying hard-earned money for streaming subscriptions were at liberty to watch whatever they wanted. How could society possibly be threatened by what individuals were consuming on their televisions, tablets and cellphones?

That dream turned out to be a chimera, as events over the past few years have proved. Outrage over web series – the long list includes Sacred Games and Taandav – combined with court cases filed against streaming platforms and relentless trolling have achieved the desired result: self-censorship.

The streaming platform that refuses to walk the path of obedience is soon brought to heel. By choosing to premiere Santosh, Lionsgate Play made a bold move that was speedily tossed aside. Indian audiences have been denied a sensitive exploration of social divisions in a country with no shortage of them.

In a pivotal scene in the movie, Sunit Rajwar’s Geeta tells Santosh, there are two types of untouchability in India. One refers to a community that society will not touch. The other kind refers to the community that society cannot touch.

The makers of movies that come on the censor board’s radar or make streaming platforms skittish – Honey Trehan’s Punjab ’95, Dibakar Banerjee’s Tees – are untouchable too. They are removed from the orbit of distribution and sent into a limbo from which they find it impossible to emerge.

On the other hand, the censor board has no problem with films like The Kerala Story (2023), The Bengal Files (2025) or the upcoming Haq and The Taj Story. Such films are not deemed offensive, even as they openly seek to stoke anger towards Muslims.

Beyond cinema, social media platforms are hosting countless incendiary videos of Muslims, Christians and Dalits being humiliated, attacked and murdered. There’s a far more dangerous ecosystem of imagery on Whatsapp alone than in Sandhya Suri’s thoughtful examination of the intersection of power and social hierarchy in India.

Also read:

‘Santosh’ director Sandhya Suri: ‘A film that carries a feeling of care for India’

The Emergency is 50 years old, but film censorship is still flourishing

Why the film ‘Punjab ’95’ hasn’t seen light of day

Dibakar Banerjee on his shelved film ‘Tees’: ‘Not so futuristic after all’