NEW DELHI – Bollywood has once again fallen into the crosshairs of the Indian Hindu nationalist ruling party – and major Western streaming services such as Amazon and Netflix are increasingly caught in the middle.
Two separate criminal charges were lodged with police this weekend against the makers of ‘Tandav’, a flashy new budget series on Amazon. The fast-paced political drama, which seems to lend heavily to India’s political scene, could uncomfortably cut off current events and the country’s biggest controversies.
The complainants, who include a politician with the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, have demanded that the government take the series off the air or take out the main scenes. Among other things, they accused the series of disrespecting Hindu gods, belittling members of individual castes and insulting the office of prime minister.
If police find merit on the charges, Amazon and the program’s promoters could end up in criminal court.
Ali Abbas Zafar, the director of ‘Tandav’, posted a statement on his Instagram account on Monday, saying the program is a fiction and any resemblance to deeds and persons and events is merely coincidental. ‘According to the statement, however, the cast and crew members take note of the concerns expressed by the people and apologize unconditionally if it has unintentionally harmed someone’s actions.
Amazon officials declined to comment.
Defenders of the program say the complaints are pretext. The pressure on Amazon to abandon the series, they say, is part of an increasingly intolerant atmosphere in India that is affecting even Bollywood, the film and entertainment industry in India. Actors, comedians, producers, artists and anyone who ventures into government, even indirectly, could jeopardize their careers, they say.
“If you take a stand, you have to pay a price,” said Sushant Singh, a Bollywood actor who openly opposed several of the government’s policies. One does not even get surprised these days. And one no longer knows how to react. ‘
These attitudes complicate the ambitions of both Bollywood studios and large corporations to capture a large Indian audience with their laptops and smartphones. Like the Hollywood film industry, Bollywood has increasingly switched to streaming as pandemic constraints face the theater industry.
Global companies are helping to provide the platforms for Indian viewers. Major streaming services such as Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar, which are owned by Disney, have invested heavily in a country that they say has great growth potential.
But they are sometimes trapped in the increasingly limited political environment of India.
Two months ago, Netflix put a similar band on the screen with a kiss. Hindu nationalists were furious that a series on Netflix showed a Hindu woman kissing a Muslim man in front of a Hindu temple – a scene that, according to Hindu nationalists, violates several taboos. The Hindu nationalists demanded that the authorities investigate Netflix and called for a boycott. No charges were filed.
The real objection to ‘Tandav’ may simply be that it is too real. The opening episode almost looks like a news story. It cuts from agricultural protests to student protests to police killings – everything that has happened in recent months under the administration of Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister.
It does not shy away from gripping topics. In one scene, a fictionalized Indian prime minister belittles a politician with a lower caste, and touches on the sensitive subject of the centuries-old Hindu social system.
Even the title of the episode is challenging. This is called ‘Dictator’.
“They use abusive language and try to slander the post of prime minister, and that clearly indicates our current prime minister,” said Ram Kadam, a BJP lawmaker who filed one of the criminal charges.
The authorities in the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to many recent murders of the police and run by one of the closest allies of Mr. Modi, a Hindu monk who became prime minister, looks particularly insulting. They said in a documentary there to the police that the Amazon series portrays the post of prime minister “in a very indecent way”. On Monday, government officials warned filmmakers “must prepare for arrest.”
In the past few months, officials from the party of Mr. Modi is increasing their pressure on some of the most successful artists in the country. Critics see the pressure as an attempt to destroy the views questioned by Hindu nationalist ideology, which seeks to turn India into an open Hindu state and push non-Hindu minorities to the margins.
The drug authorities have sued the biggest actors behind charges on possession of marijuana. Recently, a popular comedian was sent to prison for allegedly joking about Mr. Modi’s right hand man, Amit Shah, cracked, although authorities did not provide evidence that the comedian said what they claimed.
The pressure extends to other levels of life. An Indian pilot and decorated military veteran was fired from his post this month after tweeting that the prime minister was “an idiot”.
Indian films tend to be culturally conservative, with sex scenes and obscenities discouraged by India’s censorship board. But until recently, online content in India has fallen into a gray area.
In November, the Indian government ruled that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, currently run by Prakash Javadekar, a close ally of Mr. Modi, has the authority to regulate online content.
Hindu nationalists are now calling on the government to step in.
Online broadcasts are ‘full of sex, violence, drugs, abuse, hatred and vulgarity’, said Manoj Kotak, a BJP legislator, in a recent letter to Mr. Javadekar written. He concluded his letter by telling the minister to set up a regulatory body for online content and ‘meanwhile ban the controversial web series’ Tandav’. “