There is all the fascist arrogance there, the one for whom the representation of a god is worth more than the life of a man. In front of a forest of microphones, supported by a handful of fanatic supporters, Avadhesh Puri, president of the ultranationalist group Hindu Sena, assures him: “We will show them what kind of Hindus we are. We have only burned their effigy for now, if they come here we will burn them too! “ These threats target the actors of the Indian political series Tandav, streamed on the Amazon Prime platform, which nevertheless accepted “To make changes” at the initial work to calm the nationalists of the Indian People’s Party (BJP) in power.
The fault of this production? To have allegedly mocked the Hindu gods. In one of the scenes that angered supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shiva is seen talking about “azaadi” (freedom) during a university play, a word chanted to rally anti-government protests in 2019.
BJP demands that platforms be censored
Since then, there have been countless petitions, such as that of Ram Kadam, a parliamentarian of the BJP in Mumbai, explaining that he “Fights for Hindu pride and strives to ensure that no one dares to mock (the) Hindu gods “. If Amazon did not give in to the banning requests, the American company nevertheless bowed to censorship requests from a third country. Just like director Ali Abbas Zafar, who, under threat from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, announced on his Twitter account that he would make changes in “Response to concerns raised”.
The apologies of the entire production will therefore not have been enough. To penetrate the huge Indian market, Amazon Prime ordered local series like Netflix, Amazon and Disney + Hotstar, whose services were until November under the supervision of the Ministry of Digital and Information Technologies , which is not responsible for regulating content. After an intense campaign by the BJP thugs so that platforms are subjected to the same censorship as the cinema, these sites now come under the authority of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
