Police case has been filed against two top Netflix officials as one of the ministers of the governing party objected a kissing scene in a TV series. Netflix is an American streaming service which has influenced almost all the nations. In recent years Netflix has invested more than $500 million to gain a foothold in India. Netflix was in its way to success in India.
Earlier in this month the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has brought all the OTT platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime and other platforms, under the new regulations. This has already made a negative impact on Netflix which added a Hindi option on it’s platform, in the beginning of this year, to attract more Indian users.
In a recent series released by Netflix, ‘A Suitable Boy’ is an adaptation of an award winning novel, that explains the life of a young girl and her relationship with a Muslim boy, written by renowned Indian author Vikram Seth. The series was released on 26 July of this year with it’s final episode being released on 24 August. The series depicts the girl being kissed by the Muslim boy inside a temple,whic has paved the way for a line of controversies from different sides. This has also triggered the Hindu Nationalist Politicians on the other side.
According to local media reports, #BoycottNetflix was trending on twitter on last Sunday. “This has extremely objectionable content which hurts the sentiments of people of a particular religion,”- said NarottamMisra, Minister of Home Affairs in the government of Madhya Pradesh. “I have requested authorities to examine why, and with what intentions this program and this theme has been restarted on [streaming] platforms,” he added, mentioning that he was looking into what legal action could be taken.
Gaurav Tiwari a BJP youth leader ,on Saturday, told the media that he has filed a separate complaint against Monika Shergill, Netflix’s vice president of content in India and AmbikaKhurana, its director of public policy in relation to the show. The Madhya Pradesh police registered Tiwari’s complaint on Monday, accusing Netflix for committing “deliberate or malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings”, such an offense could be punishable by an imprisonment up to three years, a fine, or both, under Indian law. Tiwari has also demanded an apology from Netflix by saying that the film promotes an islamophobic conspiracy theory, ‘love jihad’, which alleges that Muslim men entraps Hindu women into converting to their religion under the name of marriage. Another thing to be noted is that this incident happened weeks after an advertisement of the luxury jewellery brand Tanishq, which celebrated the hindu-muslim unity, had been removed. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-electionand his victory for his BJP party last year, many Indian Muslims has been complaining for his emphasis on empowering India’s Hindu majority, which has left them feeling like second-class citizens in their own country.
