Last week, less than 48 hours after its release, Diljit Dosanjh starrer Satluj was removed from Zee5 due to ‘security concerns’. After a three-year-long censorship battle the makers released the uncut movie on the OTT platform, which is not subject to clearance from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), with a title rename (it was originally called Punjab ’95). Yet, the movie is unavailable until further notice. Interestingly, the film has an IMDB rating of 9.4; whether that’s due to the ban or despite it is something that’s hard to discern
A few months ago, Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated feature The Voice of Hind Rajab, which tells the real story of a five-year-old Palestinian girl trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead, had to battle censorship for weeks for a theatrical release.
However, bans, whether in film or literature, are hardly a new phenomenon—in the past everything from Orwell’s 1984 to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis have faced censure.
Among us, however, are some who are playing the bulwark. A few weeks ago, our favourite book girlie Dua Lipa curated Manifesto Library, a permanent collection of 100 books that were once banned or controversial—think Ismail Kadare’s A Dictator Calls, Kafka’s The Trial—in Porto’s famous bookstore Livraria Lello. Not everything stays lost forever.
