NEW DELHI – Bollywood has once again been targeted by India’s Hindu nationalist ruling party – and major Western streaming services like Amazon and Netflix are increasingly in the middle.
Two separate criminal complaints were made to the police over the weekend against the creators of “Tandav”, a new big-budget web series on Amazon. The fast-paced political drama, which appears to be heavily inspired by the Indian political scene, may be uncomfortably close to current events and the country’s biggest controversies.
The claimants, who include a politician from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, insisted that the government remove the series from the air or remove important scenes. Among other objections, they accused the series of disrespecting the Hindu gods, disparaging members of individual castes and tainting the post of prime minister.
If the police judge the merits of the complaints, Amazon and the show’s prosecutors could end up in criminal court.
Ali Abbas Zafar, the director of “Tandav”, posted on Monday a statement on his Instagram account saying that the show “is a work of fiction and any resemblance to acts, people and events is purely coincidental”. However, the statement said, the cast and crew “are aware of the concerns expressed by the people and apologize unconditionally if it involuntarily hurt someone’s feelings.”
Amazon officials declined to comment.
Proponents of the program say these complaints are pretexts. The pressure on Amazon to abandon the series, they say, is part of an increasingly intolerant atmosphere in India that affects even Bollywood, the Indian film and entertainment industry. Actors, comedians, producers, artists and anyone who dares to question the government, even if indirectly, could find their careers in danger, they say.
“When you take a position, you have to pay a price,” said Sushant Singh, a Bollywood actor who openly campaigned against several of the government’s policies. “Nobody is surprised today. And you don’t know how to react anymore. “
These attitudes complicate the ambitions of Bollywood studios and big companies to capture a large Indian audience through their laptops and smartphones. Like the Hollywood film industry, Bollywood has increasingly turned to streaming as the pandemic restrictions hit the theater market.
Global companies are helping to provide platforms for Indian viewers. The main streaming services like Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar, which is owned by Disney, have invested heavily in a country that they consider to have great growth potential.
But they were sometimes caught in India’s increasingly restrictive political environment.
Two months ago, a kiss on the screen put Netflix in a similar situation. Hindu nationalists were outraged that a series on Netflix showed a Hindu woman kissing a Muslim man in front of a Hindu temple – a scene that Hindu nationalists found violated several taboos. Hindu nationalists demanded that authorities investigate Netflix and called for a boycott. No charges were filed.
The real objection to “Tandav” may simply be that it is very real. The opening episode looks almost like news. It ranges from farmer protests to student protests and police killings – all the events that have taken place in recent months under the administration of Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister.
He does not shy away from sensitive topics. In one scene, a fictional Indian prime minister disparages a lower-caste politician, touching on the sensitive topic of the ancient Hindu social system.
Even the title of the episode is provocative. It is called “dictator”.
“They are using abusive language and trying to defame the position of prime minister, clearly implying our current prime minister,” said Ram Kadam, a BJP lawmaker who filed one of the criminal complaints.
Authorities in the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to many recent police killings and led by one of Modi’s closest allies, a Hindu monk who has become chief minister, seem especially offended. They said in a lawsuit to the police there that the Amazon series portrays the post of prime minister “in a very indecent way”. On Monday, state officials warned that filmmakers must “prepare for prison”.
In recent months, officials in Modi’s party have increased their pressure on some of the country’s most successful artists. Critics see this pressure as an effort to quash opinions that question Hindu nationalist ideology, which aims to transform India into a declared Hindu state and push non-Hindu minorities to the margins.
Anti-drug authorities harassed the main actors on charges related to marijuana possession. A popular comedian was recently arrested for allegedly telling jokes about Modi’s right-hand man, Amit Shah, although authorities have offered no evidence that the comedian said what they claimed.
The pressure extends to other spheres of life. An Indian airline pilot and decorated military veteran was fired from his job this month after tweeting that the prime minister was “an idiot”.
Indian cinema tends to be culturally conservative, with sex scenes and obscenities discouraged by India’s censorship commission. But, until recently, online content in India fell into a gray area.
In November, the Indian government determined that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, currently headed by Prakash Javadekar, a close ally of Modi, has the authority to regulate online content.
Hindu nationalists are now asking the government to intervene.
Online broadcasts are “full of sex, violence, drugs, abuse, hatred and vulgarity,” wrote Manoj Kotak, a BJP lawmaker, in a recent letter to Javadekar. He ended his letter by telling the minister to create a regulatory body for online content and “in the meantime, ban the controversial web series ‘Tandav’”