'Santosh' isn't 'Singham' or 'Mardaani' Enough for Bollywood

In 2012, India erupted with protests all over. The country was shocked at the brutal gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi. Santosh maker Sandhya Suri was in India at that time, working with several non-government organisations. A momentous photograph from these protests triggered the idea for Santosh in Suri’s mind. It was a female police officer at a Delhi protest amid a sea of outraged women demanding justice for a rape victim (eulogised in public memory as ‘Nirbhaya’). In a long line of women officers trying to hold the protesting women back, this one cop stood out. Suri found herself dissecting the officer’s psyche—a woman enforcing order against those demanding justice for a fellow fallen. And thus, Santosh Saini—portrayed on screen with tremendous finesse by Shahana Goswami in total control—was born out of this.Suri’s protagonist is not a vigilante or a hero. She is a woman shaped by grief, systemic oppression, and internalised biases.Her strength does not lie in delivering cinematic justice but in enduring the moral weight of her choices. Perhaps that’s why Santosh is not “Singham” or “Dabangg” enough for Bollywood. It's neither massy nor painted with broad enough brushstrokes.’Rang De Basanti’ Turns 20: When Bollywood Had a Voice and a SpineSantosh garnered international recognition and applause when it premiered at the 'Un Certain Regard' section of the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024. It went on to earn a BAFTA nomination as well. But now it faces an uncertain fate in its own country. The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has refused to approve the film for release in India, citing its “negative portrayal” of the police.Santosh does not offer the comfort of a heroic cop fighting against the odds to save the downtrodden. There isn’t much of a redemption for its protagonist. There is no catharsis.This is a world where everyone is morally compromised including its protagonist that even a Paatal Lok or Kohrra doesn’t provide. And it can be scary to see yourself reflected in any of these characters, the ones who give in to their base instincts instead of overcoming them in triumph.In a fascist society, an artist who holds up a mirror to power is the first to be silenced. So it is no surprise that a film like Santosh, which dares to question so much even when it says so little, earns brickbats instead of laurels from the establishment it dares to criticise.Santosh follows the life of a widowed woman, Santosh Saini, in her late twenties. She takes up her late husband's job and becomes a police officer in a fictional but familiar small town, somewhere in the hinterlands of northern India. As she navigates a corrupt and disturbingly flawed system, she is forced to confront her own moral boundaries.The film unflinchingly examines police complicity and brutality along with religious bigotry through the lens of class, caste, and gender dynamics.In the film, Saini’s personal loss fuels her prejudice, leading to a brutal custodial death. Her unresolved rage mirrors how historical injustices, like the plight of Kashmiri Pandits or the Holocaust, are regularly manipulated to repeatedly manufacture collective hate toward entire communities. The cycle of violence continues—not dismantled, just redirected.Review 'Jai Bhim': Suriya's Lawyer Procedural Hits the Right NotesSantosh is not the first Indian film (or series) to depict any of these realities. From Sarfarosh to Simmba, mainstream Bollywood has long depicted police officers as either righteous or rogue agents operating within a flawed system. Rohit Shetty has built an entire cinematic universe with cops that fit this mould.Even the non-massy fiction in India that attempts at nuance cannot escape this uncritical stereotype—be it Article 15, Delhi Crime, Pataal Lok, or even Dahaad (which does manage to subvert plenty of gendered and casteist tropes).Unlike the glossy heroics and glorified violence of such stories, Santosh refuses the fantasy of the noble cop with the saviour complex and thereby aligns with reality more accurately.A recent report on policing in India, published by Lokniti-CSDS and Common Cause, reveals a troubling acceptance of torture and extrajudicial violence among police personnel.An astounding 30 percent of the police personnel surveyed, believe third-degree methods are justified in serious cases, while nine percent support their use even for minor crimes.A staggering 18 percent of police personnel believe Muslims are “naturally prone” to committing crimes. Victims of torture are mainly poor and marginalised, including Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, illiterate individuals, and slum dwellers.At a time when police brutality is well-documented—both in India and globally—a film like Santosh becomes a necessary contribution to the national discourse. So it makes sense that the state that encourages such behaviour in its law enforcement machineries is determined to maintain an illusion of infallibility. ‘Singham Again’ Review: Even Ajay Devgn Can't Save This Loud, Tedious ExerciseThrough Suri’s lens, Santosh also tackles the male gaze with an ingenuity that is both powerful, complex, and comical in certain wry ways. This is a riveting way of treating a topic already tackled multiple times (albeit unsuccessfully) in Hindi cinema before. There is this scene where Santosh chews up and regurgitates her food to the disgust a man who would not stop staring at her. This is not only effective but also refreshingly irreverent.It dismisses the male gaze without playing by its rules. Santosh Saini is a far cry from Bollywood’s idea of a strong woman, the one who fits neatly into a man’s shoes.She does not get to come in punching, roaring, and asserting dominance with the same brute force as her male counterparts and walk away with a clear conscience. Even her mentor (and manipulator), Geeta Sharma —played with aplomb by Sunita Rajwar—is a woman, and a queer one at that. Sharma also subverts the idea that gender diversification or inclusion alone can disrupt entrenched hierarchies. At every step of the way, the film refuses to glorify power that is indistinguishable from the violence it claims to fight.When a previously sheltered Santosh is handed a bribe while trying to moral police a young couple at a public park, her face lights up. She hesitantly looks over at her senior whose tacit approval gives her a quiet sense of power. It is a rush played out in measured microexpressions on Goswami’s face. It is the first wave of a bigger tsunami about to wash through her later in the story, causing irredeemable destruction.The few mainstream films that had women cops as the protagonists—like Mardaani (literally translated as 'a masculine female') and Singham Again (where we meet the rather cringy 'Lady Singham')—also don’t challenge this hyper-masculine cop archetype. They simply drape it over a female body, treating strength as a gendered costume rather than a construct worth redefining. Here’s where Santosh refuses to conform.Unlike Rani Mukerji’s Shivani Shivaji Roy or Deepika Padukone’s Lady Singham—where power is framed as an extension of masculinity—Santosh Saini exposes the fallacy that feminism triumphs merely by placing women in power.The Mardaani brand of non-intersectional feminism does not address systemic issues. It harks back to Mukerji’s jejune personal views about women slapping their abusers or learning martial arts for self-defense.Mainstream ideations of the “strong woman” in charge often end up reinforcing the idea that a woman’s strength must be filtered through a masculine lens to be legitimised. They assume that the only way for a female cop to command authority is by embodying traditional “mardana” aggression or quirky machismo. It not only fails to challenge the status quo but merely outfits patriarchy in a different uniform.Rather than flattening her into a trope, Santosh allows its protagonist’s vulnerabilities to coexist with her corruptibilityThis makes Goswami’s layered portrayal of Santosh Saini a truly radical departure from the traditionally masculinised ‘strong woman’ trope in mainstream Indian cinema. Santosh presents a protagonist whose descent into unchecked aggression and machismo—traits associated with masculine strength—marks her moral decline rather than her empowerment.Life In A Delhi Jail As A Queer Man: Navigating Power, MasculinitySantosh was meant to get a theatrical release in India in January 2025, but almost four months into the year, the film remains in limbo. It had faced no issues during script approval and India’s largest cinema chain had agreed to distribute it as well. Thus, the CBFC’s refusal now can only be read as yet another manifestation of the systemic corruption that forms the crux of Santosh.Suri has expressed her disappointment, calling the decision “heartbreaking.” She knows that the film’s themes are not new to Indian cinema.She understands, though, that the lack of a maverick (read mard or mardaani) cop acting as a proxy for us—the audience that loves to imagine itself as the saviour—is the bit that is hardest to digest.The censor board provided a long list of demanded cuts so extensive that they were “impossible” to implement without altering the story. Although legal restrictions prevent Suri from disclosing specifics, she described them as spanning multiple pages, gutting the film’s core themes. If this were about explicit violence, as the board’s justifications suggest, one might ask why hyper-stylised action films glorifying vigilante justice pass through unscathed.With no appeals process available within the CBFC, the only recourse left is the courts. But legal battles are slow and arduous, and even if Santosh eventually wins, the damage will have been done.Delaying a film's release itself is a form of censorship, a way for ensuring that films with uncomfortable truths never reach the public when they are most relevant.The only solace we have is in the knowledge that by attempting to suppress Santosh, the CBFC has only amplified its message. Whether on MUBI or through the underground channels of indie cinephiles (read torrents), the film remains accessible in India. The fight against censorship, much like the fight against systemic injustice, is long and exhausting. But as Suri has vowed, she will not give up on her film. And neither should we.(The author is an independent film, TV and pop culture journalist who has been feeding into the great sucking maw of the internet since 2010. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)No Sex During Pregnancy? CBFC, Let’s Have a Conversation

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CBFC Proves Santosh isn't 'Singham' or 'Mardaani' Enough for Bollywood

Santosh Saini isn't a vigilante or a hero. She is shaped by grief, systemic oppression, and internalised biases.

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Topics: Bollywood Nirbhaya Censorship