Netflix has riled some sections in India with explicit violence & sex. But the firm says it has not agreed to censor its content.



New Delhi: The highly awaited next season of Sacred Games may not be as sexually explicit as the last one.

Netflix, a streaming service celebrated by lakhs of Indian viewers for giving them access to uncensored content, has agreed to self-regulation, ThePrint has learnt from two reliable government sources.

The “compromise” was struck during a meeting held on 25 October between Netflix and the ministry of information and broadcasting, along with other participants.

According to the sources, both Netflix and Hotstar agreed to adopt the “best practices internationally” and come up with a set of guidelines to self-regulate the content they broadcast.

Netflix will also provide the ministry a note on the guidelines.

“Yes, there was discussion of self-regulation and Netflix and Hotstar agreed that they should regulate their content,” one of the two sources, a top ministry official who did not want to be named, told ThePrint.

Representatives of 21st Century Fox, Intel Sat, AFNT India, Intel India, Google, Star TV India, Apple, and the US-India Business Council were also present at the meeting, it is learnt.

Netflix, however, denied making such a commitment.

“The information quoted is inaccurate and entirely false. Netflix was never in this meeting,” a statement from Netflix said.

While both television and film content is regulated in India, over-the-top (OTT) services like Hotstar and Netflix, being relatively new, have been free of any such control so far.

Many viewers celebrated this lack of regulation as a big win for their right to uncensored content – Indian television is notorious for arbitrary beeps and cuts, with any mention of sex and profanity muted and, at times, the slightest hint of cleavage blurred.

Even so, there have also been concerns about the explicitly violent and sexual content of some of the offerings on streaming services.

Also read: With Sacred Games, Bollywood finds a new home for its politics in Netflix

Petitions against Netflix

In 2016, the ministry of information and broadcasting had said it would not censor online content.

In October, a Delhi-based NGO called Justice for Rights filed a petition in the Delhi High Court to remove “vulgar and explicit” content from streaming services. The streaming platforms, it alleged, offered “vulgar, sexually explicit, pornographic, profane, virulent, religiously forbidden and morally unethical content” to attract more subscribers and increase profit.

Earlier the same month, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court asked the Centre for a response on another plea seeking to regulate online shows.

Amazon Prime Video, another popular OTT service that came to India in 2016, took the self-censorship route while venturing into the domestic market. Frontal nudity, politically or religiously sensitive content, and vulgar language become some of the obvious targets of self-censorship.

For example, one of the episodes of the motoring show called The Grand Tour is listed as only 30 minutes long on Amazon Prime, while the original is actually one hour. The half-an-hour difference is the sum of cuts made to remove all references to a car made of meat.

Also read: Nudity is liberating, no regrets about bold scenes: Rajshri Deshpande of ‘Sacred Games’

This report has been updated with statement from Netflix.

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