Back in July Nikhil Bhalla, an advocate on Congress¡¯ legal team, petitioned the Delhi High Court to delete a scene from Netflix hit ¡®Sacred Games¡¯.
Now, he¡¯s amended his petition, asking for a regulatory committee to be set up to censor all online media platforms.
At the time, Bhalla¡¯s petition came in response to a piece of dialogue in the show, where the lead character called Rajiv Gandhi a ¡°fattu¡±. The Congress party clearly took issue with that, sparking an uproar surrounding the entire show. Since then, Netflix has edited the subtitles in the show to change it from ¡°pussy¡± to what it felt was more appropriate as ¡°wimp¡±. However, that wasn¡¯t enough.
Now, in a statement to Medianama, Bhalla has confirmed that he¡¯s changed his petition to encompass broader scope, that of regulating streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. There used to be an online content regulatory committee but that was disbanded by the Information and Broadcasting ministry. Now, the Indian government is considering setting up another under the IT ministry. The next Delhi High Court hearing for this case will be held on October 20, where the decision could be made.
If that does happen, we could see censorship similar to what we experience in movie theatres today. If any of you watched Deadpool 1 or 2 in the cinema, you probably remember sitting through a lot of muted cuss words, and even a deleted scene (shown in a trailer for the movie) where Wade Wilson has sex with his wife.
Yeah, now think about how enjoyable Sacred Games would be without all the raw emotion that comes through in its explicit dialogue. It¡¯s not like the movie has been covered in filth for the sake of shock and awe either. After all, anyone living in Mumbai can tell you that you¡¯d hear at least three quarters of the entire season¡¯s cuss words in a single hour while travelling by train.?
Not to mention it would probably mean cutting the scene where Kubbra Sait¡¯s character reveals herself to Ganesh Gaitonde, without which you lose a crucial part of their love story, not to mention Kukoo¡¯s vulnerability and character development.?
Maybe it's time to just stop pretending we¡¯re not collectively worse than anything film and TV can show us, and then we may finally have an accurate representation of India.