Summary of this article
For decades, this cinematic image of Punjab has served as the heartbeat of Bollywood’s emotional landscape.
It was a carefully constructed idea, designed to soothe the collective trauma of a nation divided.
However, from the golden nostalgia of the 1990s to the gritty, fractured realities of contemporary streaming series like Kohrra (2023-2026), the depiction of Punjab has undergone a radical transformation.
“Zarooraton ne par kaat diye hai; roti paon ki zanjeer ban gayi hai,” rues Amrish Puri’s patriarch Chaudhary Baldev Singh in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), as he reminisces about the home he left behind in India, in Punjab to be specific, and cannot return to, no matter how much he desires it. He serves as the literal living embodiment of the displaced Punjabi soul who can only sing poetry about the “gilded cage” of the diaspora experience, but cannot fly away even if the longing strikes. His confession melds seamlessly with the evocative song “Ghar Aaja Pardesi”, the lyrics of which act as a siren call from the ancestral land. For the post-Partition generation represented by Baldev Singh, Punjab is the only place where the wings of the spirit can truly unfold, contrasting the material wealth of London with the spiritual poverty of exile.
For decades, this cinematic image of Punjab has served as the heartbeat of Bollywood’s emotional landscape. It has been a land of sprawling mustard fields, vigorous bhangra beats and the warmth of an expansive, hospitable heart. It was a carefully constructed idea, designed to soothe the collective trauma of a nation divided. However, from the golden nostalgia of the 1990s to the gritty, fractured realities of contemporary streaming series like Kohrra (2023-2026), the depiction of Punjab has undergone a radical transformation: shifting from a lost Eden for the diaspora to a site of profound systemic decay.
The dominance of Punjab in the Indian cinematic imagination is inextricably linked to the trauma of 1947. While the Partition of India devastated both the East and the West of the nation, Bollywood—largely rooted in Mumbai but helmed by many who fled the Western front—prioritised the Punjabi experience. Consequently, the scars of Bengal, despite their depth and persistence, were often sidelined in the popular consciousness. Punjab became the face of the "lost homeland."
By the 1990s, this nostalgia evolved into a specific aesthetic of the idyllic homeland, perfected by Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra. In Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the golden sarson ke khet (mustard fields) were no longer just crops; they were a visual shorthand for innocence and belonging—a balm for the weary migrant soul that has romanticised the idea of home. For a burgeoning NRI (Non-Resident Indian) audience, these films offered a sanitised, vibrant version of home that they could consume from across the world, be it London or New York.
This trend continued through the early 2000s, with films like Veer-Zaara (2004) and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008), where Punjab was presented as a site of eternal romance and spiritual resilience. Even in Jab We Met (2007), the protagonist’s journey to Bhatinda represented a return to life, colour and familial warmth, contrasting with the often heartbreaking modernity of the city.
As the decade progressed, films began to capitalise on Punjabi identity through different lenses, from inane comedies to tales on undying heroism. Singh Is Kinng (2008) utilised the "jolly Punjabi" trope, while Kesari (2019) leaned into Sikh valour and sacrifice—both starring Akshay Kumar.
Pinjar (2003), based on Amrita Pritam’s novel of the same name, stood out as a stark departure to this trend as it refused to gloss over the brutal fallout of Partition, particularly for the women of the region. It depicted the Punjabi landscape not as a playground for song and dance, but as a battlefield where female bodies became the ultimate markers of communal “honour”. Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D (2009) also acted as an early, hallucinogenic crack in the facade, stripping the pind (ancestral village) of its traditional sanctity by portraying it as a site of stifling patriarchy and inherited wealth that fuels the protagonist's self-destructive, drug-fuelled descent into a modern-day wasteland.
Then in 2016 arrived the definitely disruptive Udta Punjab. The Abhishek Chaubey film shattered the facade further, exposing a state grappling with its lost youth, rampant drug and alcohol addiction, and a consumerist culture fuelled by foreign aspirations. The mustard fields were replaced by dark warehouses and border checkpoints. Here, the "Punjabi Gabru" (strong youth) was no longer a symbol of vitality, but a tragic figure of systemic neglect.
Phillauri (2017) anchored itself in the bloody history of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, reminding that the soil of Punjab is inextricably mixed with the blood of its martyrs. Manmarziyaan (2018) traded traditional melodrama for the messy, impulsive and often toxic realities of modern love in Amritsar. Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila (2024) further interrogated the intersection of caste, fame and violence, showing how the very folk music that defined the state’s identity was also a lightning rod for the era's socio-political tensions.
Even in urban narratives like Made in Heaven (2019-2023), the character of Jaspreet (Jazz) provides a window into what it means to be Punjabi in contemporary times. Her brother’s struggle with addiction, the family’s desperate attempt to maintain a veneer of dignity and control over Jazz’s future highlights the domestic toll of the state's crisis beyond its borders.
While Udta Punjab used the landscape to show a youth lost to addiction, Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026) uses it to show a youth repurposed by the state where the “Gabru jawaan” is turned into a weapon of the state intelligence apparatus. The character of Jaskirat Singh Rangi (played by Ranveer Singh) provides a jarring, hyper-masculine contrast to the idyllic Punjab of the past. His family’s destruction is used to frame Punjab not as a site of nostalgia, but as a site of political betrayal and personal loss that justifies his transformation into a ruthless undercover agent.
The journey that started with Udta Punjab reaches a harrowing peak in the recently released second season of Kohrra (2023-2026). If the early films were about the Punjab da barra dil (Punjab’s big heart), then Kohrra tapped into the suffocating side of it. The series moves beyond the surface-level drug crisis to explore the foundational rot—from toxic masculinity, rampant alcoholism, classism, to a rigid caste hierarchy that persists despite the state’s outward modernity. The gender violence depicted is not an anomaly, but a byproduct of a patriarchal structure that has struggled to adapt to a changing world.
Most significantly, Kohrra brings to light the harrowing reality of indentured labour—a form of modern-day slavery where migrant workers are trapped in debt bondage on the very farms once romanticised in films like DDLJ and Veer-Zaara. The series portrays a cyclical pattern of violence, where the trauma of the past (Partition, the militancy of the 80s) has mutated into a localised, everyday brutality. But there is always the risk to telling such stories. The journey of Punjab ’95 (originally titled Ghallughara, meaning “massacre” or “genocide”) is a case in point. The as-of-yet-unreleased film serves as a harrowing case study of state-sponsored erasure in contemporary cinema. The censorship battles of Udta Punjab and Punjab ’95 are deeply intertwined, representing two different stages of the same struggle that ultimately attempts to control the Punjab narrative.
In Udta Punjab, the suppression was largely seen as electoral and reputational. The film was set to release shortly before state elections, and the depiction of a drug-ravaged youth directly challenged the government's narrative of prosperity. The court eventually ruled that the CBFC is a “certification” board, not a “censor” board.
As of now, Punjab ’95 is facing a staggering demand for nearly 120 cuts in a 120-minute film. The censorship demands go beyond mere content trimming. The CBFC has insisted on removing all mentions of Punjab, effectively suggesting the setting be changed to a “fictitious world” as per Anna MM Vetticad’s interview with Trehan for Article 14.
Most critically, the board demanded the removal of Jaswant Singh Khalra’s name—the very protagonist whose life the biopic chronicles. As per Trehan, this is an attempt to silence the legacy of a man whose investigation into the illegal cremation of thousands of “unidentified” bodies led to his own extrajudicial abduction, torture and murder by the Punjab Police in 1995, a crime for which six police officials were eventually convicted of murder in 2005.
If and when Punjab ‘95 gets a release, it will add to the legacy of films trying to restore the state’s image for all its good as well as bloody. And it matters because the journey of Punjab in our cinema mirrors the journey of India itself—from the hopeful (if naive) idealism of the post-Independence era to the complex, fractured reality of the present. By stripping away the golden filter of the mustard fields, contemporary cinema is finally allowing us to see Punjab not as a nostalgic postcard, but as a living, breathing and deeply pained reality that continues to heal from its scars, both old and new.
