Santosh, Britain’s official Oscars submission in the international feature film category, has been denied release in India over concerns about its “negative portrayal of police.”
Set in rural north India, the Hindi-language film stars Shahana Goswami as a 28-year-old widow who gets her deceased husband’s police job on compassionate grounds and has to investigate the rape and murder of a young Dalit girl.
The film by British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri provides a stark peek into deep-rooted problems within Indian police, depicting its institutional misogyny, caste-based discrimination and the routine use of violence and torture. Santosh also looks at the prevalence of sexual violence, particularly against Dalit women, and examines the growing tide of anti-Muslim sentiment in India.
Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, are placed on the lowest rung of India’s rigid caste hierarchy and are often targeted for discrimination by upper castes as well as institutions of state even though untouchability was formally abolished in 1955.
Santosh was reportedly shot entirely in India over 44 days in and around Lucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, with an entirely Indian cast.
After premiering at the 77th Cannes Film Festival last May, Santosh went on to earn a BAFTA nomination for outstanding debut feature and received acclaim from critics and audiences alike. It was named one of the top five international films by the National Board of Review and brought Suri and Goswami best director and best actor honours at the recent Asian Film Awards.
In December, media reports said Santosh had been acquired by PVR Inox Pictures for distribution and was set to release in India on 10 January.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that the release had been suspended after the Central Board of Film Certification, the country’s film certification body commonly known as the censor board, raised objections even though the producers had previously secured script approval in India.
A film cannot be released in Indian theatres without being certified by the board. In 2021, the board abolished the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, which allowed filmmakers to appeal its decisions. Now, the only way for filmmakers to contest a ruling is to go to court, an expensive, long-drawn process that guarantees nothing.
“We’re sort of stuck in censorship. To be honest, the Indian censor has requested certain changes that I don’t think the filmmaker is comfortable with, nor us, to be honest,” producer Mike Goodridge told Variety at the time.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that the censor board refused to certify Santosh because it believed the film showed the Indian police in a harsh and negative light.
Suri called the 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 told The Guardian.
Suri confirmed that the cuts demanded by the censor board were so “lengthy and wide-ranging” that they were “impossible” to implement.
While she could not share the exact cuts demanded due to legal restrictions, she said the list went on “for several pages” and “included concerns about themes relating to police conduct and wider societal problems which are deeply baked into the film”.
“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. 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,” she said.
“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.”
Goswami shared her disappointment as well, telling India Today: “The censor has given a list of changes they require for the film to release and we as a team are not in agreement with the cuts as they would change the film too much, and so it is in a deadlock where it probably won't release theatrically in India.
“It's just sad that something that has gone through censor approval at the script level should require so many cuts and changes for it to be considered okay to release in India.”
The Independent has reached out to the film certification board for comment.
In an interview with Scroll, Suri explained her motivation for making Santosh and who had inspired the characters. “During a protest against Nirbhaya, I saw a photograph of female protesters facing a female cop,” she said, referring to the 2012 gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy intern in Delhi. “That cop had such an interesting expression on her face. She was one of them and she wasn’t one of them. She was the way in.
“Santosh is sort of a blank sheet when she comes into the police force…she’s in a world where everything is hierarchical. She’s accessing not just the bad power of the uniform but also the ability to help someone. The idea was also to see how she becomes politicised very casually, how she is drip-fed casual Islamophobia.”
There is ample documentation and reportage of police violence and sexual violence against Dalit women in India.
In 2021, the gangrape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras brought national and international condemnation for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Four men were arrested later but police were heavily criticised for their initial handling of the attack, their swift cremation of the victim’s body, their heavy-handed approach with protesters, and their attempts to block opposition politicians from meeting with the victim’s family.
In 2019, India saw massive protests sparked by Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government’s decision to introduce the Citizenship Amendment Act, which many saw as discriminatory against Muslims.
The protests saw police attack student protestors inside the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University as well as attacks in predominantly Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods where families claim police opened fire without provocation.
In June 2020, Human Rights Watch said “police failed to respond adequately” during the riots and were at times “complicit” in attacks against Muslims. It said authorities “failed to conduct impartial and transparent investigations”.
Suri questioned if her style of filmmaking was uncomfortable to the censor board as police brutality was not a new subject even in Indian cinema.
“Maybe there’s something about this film which is troubling in that everybody is morally compromised and there is no single hero. 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.”
However, Suri remained hopeful.
“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.”
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