Who Owns the Story of Punjab?
Article by Aditi Dubey
“Wars do not end when the last bullet is fired. They end when societies decide how they will remember them.”
The debate over Satluj has been cast in predictable terms. One side sees the film as an artistic examination of painful truths. The other sees it as a selective retelling of history that risks obscuring the wider realities of Punjab’s insurgency. As the arguments grow louder, the central issue is quietly being overlooked.
The real question is not whether a film should be screened or restricted. It is who gets to shape the historical memory of Punjab.
Every conflict leaves behind two legacies. The first is physical, measured in lives lost and institutions scarred. The second is psychological, measured in the stories that survive long after the violence has ended.
History is rarely remembered through official reports alone. It is remembered through films, documentaries, literature and, increasingly, through digital media. These narratives become the lens through which future generations understand events they never experienced.
Punjab’s insurgency was one of independent India’s gravest internal security challenges. Thousands of civilians, police personnel and militants lost their lives over more than a decade. Schools shut early, businesses operated in fear, public officials travelled under armed protection and ordinary families found themselves caught between militant intimidation and aggressive counter-insurgency operations. Any honest account of that period must acknowledge both the brutality of terrorism and the difficult questions raised about the conduct of the state.
Historical integrity demands that neither reality be erased by the other.
This discussion has acquired fresh relevance because Punjab continues to face evolving security challenges that seek to exploit the same vulnerabilities through different means.
Over the past year, Punjab has continued to witness repeated attempts at cross-border smuggling using drones carrying narcotics, arms and ammunition. In 2026 alone, the Border Security Force and Punjab Police have reported a series of successful interceptions, including the recovery of drone-dropped consignments of heroin, sophisticated weapons and ammunition, while dismantling Pakistan-linked smuggling modules.
Security agencies have consistently warned that drone-enabled infiltration has become one of the most significant security challenges along the Punjab frontier. The tactics have changed. The objective of exploiting Punjab’s vulnerabilities has not.
This evolution offers an important lesson.
Modern conflict is no longer confined to borders or battlefields. It unfolds simultaneously in cyberspace, on social media, through artificial intelligence, and within competing narratives about history itself. A manipulated video, an out-of-context historical clip or a selective portrayal of past events can travel across continents within minutes, often shaping public opinion long before verified facts emerge.
In this environment, cinema becomes more than entertainment.
For many young Indians, particularly those born after the insurgency, films will become their first serious engagement with Punjab’s troubled past. They are unlikely to read commission reports, parliamentary debates or academic studies. Their understanding will be shaped by what they watch, what they share online and what algorithms continue to recommend.
That does not diminish artistic freedom. Democracies derive strength from allowing artists to question authority and revisit uncomfortable chapters of history.
But artistic freedom does not diminish the importance of historical context.
A film can accurately depict individual incidents while still presenting an incomplete picture of the larger conflict. Historical distortion does not arise only from falsehoods. It also emerges through omission. When audiences are shown one dimension of a conflict without its broader political, social and geopolitical context, they inherit a fragmented understanding of history.
This is not an abstract concern.
Across the world, governments are increasingly recognising that information itself has become a domain of national security. Public inquiries in several democracies, including Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, have highlighted how foreign actors seek to influence domestic debates through coordinated information campaigns, diaspora mobilisation and digital ecosystems. The objective is not always to change policy immediately. Often, it is to shape public perception gradually by influencing how societies interpret their own history.
Punjab is not immune to this phenomenon.
For decades, Pakistan has attempted to keep the Khalistan narrative alive despite its limited resonance within Punjab. The methods have evolved from arms and training camps to digital propaganda, diaspora mobilisation, social media amplification and sustained attempts to revive historical grievances in international discourse. The objective is no longer simply to sponsor violence. It is to preserve a narrative that can be activated whenever geopolitical circumstances make it useful.
It is in this larger context that the debate surrounding Satluj must be understood. The issue is not whether difficult questions about Punjab’s past should be asked. They should be. Democracies owe that responsibility to their citizens.
The issue is whether those questions can be asked while preserving the historical completeness of the conflict itself.
Punjab’s story cannot be reduced to a binary of victims and perpetrators. It is the story of innocent civilians who bore the greatest burden of violence, police officers who fought a ruthless insurgency, public servants who became targets, families displaced by fear, political failures that deepened mistrust, allegations of excesses that continue to demand reflection, and persistent attempts by hostile external actors to exploit those wounds. To privilege one strand while neglecting the others is not historical reconciliation. It is historical selection.
This is why the Satluj controversy should not be viewed merely as a dispute over a film. It is part of a larger contest over historical ownership. In an age where narratives travel faster than facts and digital platforms amplify emotion over context, the stories societies choose to preserve become matters of strategic consequence. Punjab defeated insurgency through enormous sacrifice. It should not lose the battle over its memory through selective remembrance.
