Like the suspicion about dissenters being involved in an international conspiracy against the government, the expressions of perceived hurt on religious sentiments by the digital media and other online services can be a handy tool in the ruling party’s hands to extend its areas of control.

While dissenters are liable to find themselves enmeshed in legal tangles which prevent them from challenging the authorities, the panacea for assuaging bruised religious feelings are disciplining the offender via official diktat.

Since the culprit is usually a publication or a film, the answer lies in a ban or censorship. Quite a few books have had to be taken off the shelves in recent years because the authorities frowned on their content. Among them are Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, James Laine’s biography of Shivaji, and Wendy Doniger’s tract on Hinduism.

Similarly, films and TV serials have felt the wrath of those who claimed to have been hurt by their portrayal of historical personalities such as Rani Padmavati, a medieval queen, and by the feature film, Parzania, on the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Rules for OTT platforms and digital news portals

More recently, it is the productions on OTT (over-the-top) platforms that have irked some of the viewers and have led to the government framing new rules for these new entertainment channels and also the digital news portals and the social media. The news portals are a new phenomenon, which has challenged the hegemony of the print media, mainly with some of them being extremely critical of the establishment. 

Before considering the effect of the proposed restrictions, it may be worthwhile examining how the sense of hurt, real or feigned, among readers and viewers stultify not only artistic creativity but also intellectual efflorescence.

The most celebrated case in history is that of the astronomer Galileo, whose assertion about the earth moving around the sun rather than the other way round hurt the religious sentiments of Christians in medieval times and led to his recantation of his claim under duress.

Mercifully, Europe survived the onslaught of the bigots and heralded the beginning of the modern period with the flowering of art, culture, and science in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom. India, too, had its heroes in earlier times in astronomy (Aryabhata), medicine (Susruta), literature (Kalidasa), language (Panini), Tansen (music) and others.   

Modern India also produced great poets and writers (Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand), scientists (C.V. Raman, Jagdish Chandra Bose), filmmakers (Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal), musicians (Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan), and others.

Would any of them have reached their pinnacles of glory under a regime of strict official oversight? There is little doubt that the new avenues of entertainment provided by the OTT platforms have seemingly encouraged a blossoming of artistic talent apparently because of the absence of a censor board breathing down the necks of the actors and directors.  

It is this new uninhibited freedom of expression which appears to have unnerved the government. Hence, the promptness with which it responded to the complaints of the stick-in-the-mud, self-appointed purists who have taken upon themselves the task of being the nation’s conscience-keepers.

It goes without saying that politically, they are right-of-center which makes them the natural allies of a right-wing government. Their objective is obviously to ensure that the OTT films also meet the fate of Parzania whose chief critic was the Bajrang Dal, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) affiliate.

It cannot be gainsaid that if outfits like the Bajrang Dal or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad determine the artistic content of the films shown on Netflix or Amazon Prime, no filmmaker of repute will like to cater for these streaming services even if they have a worldwide audience. As a result, the religious sentiments of sensitive souls may be spared any pain, but the Indian filmmakers will enter a dark period in their careers.

Government’s stand

The government’s explanation for the crackdown on these presentations is comprehensive enough to nip all literary, cinematic, and journalistic ventures in the bud. In a bid to 'save' society, the government has identified, among other things, factors like obscenity, defamation, invasion of privacy, what is hurtful for minors, in addition to its pet obsessions about threats to the country’s sovereignty and public order.

The charge of obscenity can hang like Damocles' sword over the heads of filmmakers because the OTT movies routinely carry warnings about sex, nudity, and violent language with four-letter words usually littering the script. A shrinking violet among the viewers can lodge a complaint against any of the numerous productions to make grievance officers hunt for the suspects and the filmmakers scurrying for cover. The hullabaloo will be enough to dissuade any prospective entrepreneur in the entertainment industry from entering the field.

Any code for reigning in politicians?

However, what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Palpably, the code of ethics is meant only for those engaged in the tinsel world of films and journalism and not for politicians. There is no indication that the latter can be pulled up for defying the norms which endanger public order with communal statements unlike, say, the maker of the serial, Tandav, who has been doing the rounds of the courts.

Otherwise, Assam’s regionally powerful minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, would have also faced the music of the law courts for saying that the BJP “doesn’t need the votes of the Miya Muslims involved in distorting Assamese culture, language.”

Surely, the virtual disenfranchisement of a section of voters in the eyes of the ruling party for allegedly disfiguring the local ethos can hurt the sentiments of the targeted community and is not conducive to the maintenance of public order.

Similarly, is the sense of national harmony enhanced by the observation of BJP MP Tejasvi Surya that the “the idea that … our constitution is what makes us plural is the regular bullshit that our kids are fed with” and that “unless Hindus realize that India is plural because India is majority Hindu and not just because of a constitution, we won’t go anywhere”?

Whatever the direction which the young parliamentarian has in mind, it is unlikely to be achieved by suppressing artistic and journalistic freedom.

(The writer is a commentator on current affairs. The views are personal)