In 2018, Netflix rolled out ‘Sacred Games’—promising to break all the stuffy rules made by Indian censor boards. In 2024, it quietly sold Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey Man’—a Hanuman-inspired action flick—after repeatedly delaying its production. It speaks volumes about the state of streaming platforms in India—whose lawyers are now more stringent than the censor board. In part one, we trace the slippery slide down the greasy pole of self-censorship. Part two of our series is on the new regime of censorship of streaming platforms
Researched by: Nirmal Bhansali
Self-censorship: An origin story
In 2018, then Netflix CEO Reed Hastings talked up ‘Sacred Games’ as the “first big, spectacular Netflix series” out of India. And he promised: “You will see a different side of Mumbai. It is not a pretty, happy, dancey one. It is crime and gritty like ‘Narcos.’” Hastings also cheekily predicted that Netflix would gain 100 million subscribers in India alone. Unfortunately for him, neither assertion has aged well.
Today, Netflix India only has 6.5 million users. And when asked about the many projects it has quietly cancelled—for being too “gritty”—the company now issues the same canned statement:
We have an incredibly broad range of Indian original films and TV shows, all of which speak to our long standing support for creative expression. This diversity not only reflects our members’ very different tastes, it also distinguishes our service from the competition.
So how did things come to such a sorry pass? Why did Netflix and other OTT platforms in India slide so rapidly down the greasy pole of self-censorship? The answer dates back to the pandemic.
The golden era of corona: Until the virus put us under house arrest, streaming platforms were modestly successful. But in 2020, socially distanced, bored human beings fueled a global boom that propelled the likes of Netflix to stratospheric heights. The story was no different in India. At the end of 2021, Film Companion reported:
According to the Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2021, India has 353 million digital video consumers, which is about 25% of its population. Of these, 111 million are watching SVOD content (premium paid content). The audience base has grown at 25-30% per year over the last two years (largely owing to the pandemic), and is expected to only get bigger.
Filmmakers and viewers basked in this ‘summer’ of abandon—freed of the usual restraints placed on the Indian entertainment industry. As online entities, these companies were ruled by the IT Act—not any censor board.
But, but, but: There were already dark omens of the perils ahead. In 2019, a Hindutva group filed an FIR against Netflix for its “deep-rooted Hinduphobia”—citing ‘Sacred Games’ and ‘Leila’. The police did nothing. In 2020, a BJP leader got worked up about a scene in ‘A Suitable Boy’—where a Muslim boy kisses a Hindu girl in a temple. This time, the police did register a case against Netflix execs. No one was threatened or arrested. But the government had taken due note—both of the complaints and the soaring subscriber figures.
When the tide turned…
In November 2020, the government brought the streaming platforms under the ambit of the Information & Broadcasting ministry—which also regulates entertainment content in theatres and on TV. It marked the first step toward controlling the unruly streaming platforms. But this was mild compared to what would follow—on the release of ‘Tandav’ on Prime Video.
The dance of destruction: Ali Abbas Zafar’s web series dropped on Amazon in January, 2021. At the time, the Hindustan Times critic called this wannabe ‘House of Cards’ “hokey and ham-fisted.” The series followed the son of a Prime Minister striving to secure the crown for himself. And in an attempt to be ‘serious’, it referenced everything from farmer protests to JNU politics. The scene that launched a conflagration of protests was as follows:
At the heart of the controversy is a scene in the first episode of the series. In it, actor Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub plays Lord Shiva in a stage play, and says, "Azaadi, what the...?" In the same scene, the narrator on stage tells Lord Shiva that he needs to do something to improve his popularity on social media as Lord Ram's popularity is gaining. Shiva asks whether he should come up with a new display picture.
This was interpreted as an intent to “ridicule” the gods—an interpretation reinforced, no doubt, by the involvement of a Muslim director and actor. For what it’s worth, you can watch it below:
Crimes and consequences: This time, the outrage received official support—as BJP MPs wrote letters demanding action from the I&B ministry (which was newly and happily in charge of streaming). The campaign gathered intensity and reach. There were at least 10 cases filed across the country—demanding the arrest of the director, writer and Amazon content head Aparna Purohit. This time, the intent was to draw blood:
An Uttar Pradesh judge reviewing Purohit’s plea seeking protection from arrest ruled that she was trying to “earn money in the most brazen manner” by mocking Hinduism and undermining India as “a united force socially, communally and politically.”... Facing the threat of arrest, Purohit was whisked by Prime Video into safe houses and went incommunicado, two friends recalled.
Purohit and all others involved in making ‘Tandav’ issued abject apologies—which have since become a familiar routine in the entertainment industry. The offending scenes were hacked—but the series was not withdrawn. These were still early days.
FYI: To this day, several of these cases against Purohit remain open—despite the best efforts of her employers. As a result, she cannot leave the country without permission from the police.
The world after Tandav: Safety first!
The ‘Tandav’ nightmare was intended to send a message—which was dutifully noted by all—not just Amazon:
As Purohit faced the threat of arrest in 2021, the Netflix India chief, Monika Shergill, told the company’s global leaders that its India office should not take risks or they might also face the possibility of jail, said a former Netflix India executive.
And the consequences were immediate.
A code of ethics: A month after the ‘Tandav’ affair, the government issued the ‘Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021’—that would govern all social media and streaming platforms—in one handy swoop. The new rules required all of them to create internal mechanisms for ‘self-regulation’—but gave the government the final say:
In early 2021, the Indian government introduced a system of self-regulation in which streaming companies must resolve viewer complaints within 15 days, or else face regulatory scrutiny by an industry body or a government committee staffed by various ministries.
This in itself was a significant shift. Until that time, if there was a complaint against a movie or series, the courts would decide whether it offended religious sentiments or threatened national security. Not some company executive or a bureaucrat appointed by politicians. An I&B official candidly told the Washington Post: “We had to think of how to discipline these platforms.”
The power of ‘vague’: The guidelines for content were deliberately broad and unhelpful—so it encouraged the platforms to err on the side of extreme caution:
“When it comes to anything that is restricting speech, the vaguer it is, the more restrictive it is, because there is more room for interpreting offence. You can fit a lot of things within those terms. By not narrowly defining the contours of what you can say and can’t say, it gives the decision making body a lot of leeway to make that decision,” says [Akshat] Agarwal.
A scriptwriter explains why it works so well: Since there is no “official memo” that lays out what you can say, “everybody’s just supposed to know what you can’t say”—which is next to nothing, if possible.
Chup ho ja sim sim: The code worked exactly as intended. All the platforms performed a sweeping self-audit—ruthlessly hacking or junking anything that may offend. As a former Netflix exec explained: “You wanted to make sure that you are not making the same mistakes that happened on ‘Tandav.’” Prime hastily shelved ‘Gormint’—a political satire on the lines of ‘Veep’. Netflix dropped a documentary on Indira Gandhi—that drew unflattering parallels to Narendra Modi. Also canned: A Dibankar Banerjee series that focused on a Muslim family facing bigotry.
The self-gag order: The code of ethics turned out to be irrelevant. The fear of a sequel to ‘Tandav’ was so great, there was no need for any grievance committee—government-appointed or otherwise. The dirty job of censorship was assigned to teams of professionals: “Now the teams of lawyers and policy experts have been beefed up and they're looking for subtext. I've never seen that happen. They pre-empt everything, stuff I didn't even think of while writing."
The bottomline: In 2021, an industry executive told Film Companion:
It's not that bleak. The question we now ask ourselves is, 'Is this content really worth it?' Is this content going to bring in the numbers and is the return of investment going to be so good, that it's fine to risk the post-release trouble.
The answer has been a big fat no—and it has resulted in an even stricter regime of self-censorship, as we will see in part two.
Reading list
The best two deep dives on the subject are this 2023 Washington Post report (splainer gift link)—and a 2021 Film Companion piece. The Internet Freedom Foundation did a case study on ‘Tandav’. Manu Joseph in Mint called out the immaturity of Indian censors. The Wire has more on the Code of Ethics.
