By Karan Thapar

As the name suggests, Sandhya Suri is a filmmaker of Indian origin. Her film Santosh was Britain’s official entry for the Oscars, it won widespread acclaim at Cannes and a BAFTA nomination whilst Shahana Goswami was given the best actress award at the Asian Film Awards. But hundreds of millions of Indians are unlikely to ever see it because of the sweeping and damaging censorship cuts the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has demanded which, understandably, Sandhya Suri has declined to accept.

We, the people of India, will be the losers. For a start, the film is entirely made in India, with an entirely Indian cast and it’s in Hindi. In other words, it’s as Indian as Indian can be.

More importantly, it portrays a truth that most Indians consider undeniable. Alas the CBFC believes it can hide it from us. I’m referring to police cruelty and torture.

I’ve seen the film and it’s a distressing, disturbing but very realistic portrayal of the relationship between the police and the village communities of rural Northern India. It shows how the police can torture innocent people, mistreat Dalits and Muslims, justify rape and intimidate the general public. Those who have to deal with the police, without the advantage of birth, wealth and contacts, know this to be the truth. It would not be a surprise to them, leave aside a shock. They experience it every day. But the CBFC doesn’t want to accept and acknowledge it.

A recently published report on ‘Police Torture and (Un)Accountability’, done by Common Cause and Lokniti CSDS, corroborates what the film shows. Over 8,000 policemen in 17 states were surveyed and almost 30% justified torture, nearly 25% said killing dangerous criminals was better than waiting for a trial and 20% approved of tough methods to create fear among the public. An astonishing 50% said Muslims are prone to criminality and over 40% said Standard Operating Procedures are “rarely or never” followed. An Ipsos survey has established that only 33% of Indians trust the police. None of this is surprising. We instinctively know it’s true.

In fact, there’s no dearth of studies revealing police high-handedness. In 2019, the Annual Report of the National Campaign Against Torture said there were 1,723 custodial deaths in that year. That’s almost five every single day!

Santosh is simply illustrating visually, grimly but graphically, what these studies have revealed. Yet the Indian people will never get to see it. Not unless the CBFC has a miraculous change of heart.

The amazing thing is that Sandhya Suri submitted the script to the Indian authorities to get permission to film in this country and no issues were raised at that point. That’s what she’s told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. But “the list of cuts (required by the CBFC) was so long it had gone on for several pages.” She said they would have been “impossible” to implement without lacerating the film and destroying its vision.

Having seen it and felt its impact, which is undeniable, I believe this film is important for us to see. I know Bollywood frequently depicts police high-handedness but it does so in a mild and sanitized way. There’s always a relieving good side. That’s not the case with Santosh. It portrays an unvarnished, unrelenting, unrelieved reality that may be hard to watch but we cannot be blind to. Indeed, we must not.

Yet the extent of our denial goes further. Santosh is only the latest addition to it. India is one of few countries that has refused to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture and also doesn’t have its own law to prevent custodial violence. But those are also truths we rarely discuss or, if we occasionally raise them, it’s only to quickly forget.

Santosh, if it were to be seen, would give us the chance to ask why? Why is this permitted? Why is it continuing? Perhaps that’s why the CBFC has ensured the film will never be seen by us.

Satyameva Jayate.