Web series Sacred Games gets a political boost 

Netflix couldn’t have hoped for a better boost for their premier series Sacred Games about a turbaned Sardarji cop and a crude sociopath playing hide ‘n’ seek for 8-hour long episodes, than the huge uproar over Nawazuddin Siddiqui (who has rapidly grown typecast playing the scummy sociopath) calling a Rajiv Gandhi a….errrr, “Phattu”.

First, the excuse that the actor is not to blame doesn’t hold water. Nawazuddin Siddiqui should check his dialogues before delivering them.Would he call a politician from the ruling regime any kind of unparliamentary name?

Secondly, who are we to protest about Sacred Games when Mr Gandhi’s own son, usually so vocal on all matters to do with his family, has responded with merely an even-tempered tweet? Far milder rebuke in Madhur Bhandarkar’s Indu Sarkar had the Congress loyalists out on the streets.

This week, Arnab Goswami, on his news channel, was busy pulling up the entire film industry for their selective outrage against the curbing of freedom of expression. According to him, the entertainment industry should be pulled up for not defending Nawazuddin’s right to call Rajiv Gandhi “Phattu”.

Does that make any sense? Says senior journalist and author Bharati S Pradhan, “I won’t mention names but by and large, there are a group of people in the film industry, authors, poets and artists amongst ‘civil society’ and the media who selectively outrage against freedom of expression. What’s wrong with references to the Emergency, Bofors and Shah Bano or calling a former PM a wimp for throwing Shah Bano to the fringe elements. Americans have called Trump far worse names while Mr Modi here has been called by far more monstrous names. Netflix is a platform that does not have the censor board breathing down anybody’s neck. So people like Anurag Kashyap go to town with their profanity, raw sex and general crudity. If political parties start censoring their content, where does it end? I mean all political parties because come Season 2 and it will probably be the BJP jumping up to censure Anurag and Vikramaditya.”

Filmmaker-activist Ashoke Pandit also defends the filmmaker’s right to have his say. “It’s a point of view of an individual who thinks he (Rajiv Gandhi) was a Phattu. I might agree or disagree doesn’t matter. It’s the freedom of expression of a filmmaker to express the way he wants about an individual. It’s surprising that those who are giving lectures to Narendra Modi and his party of being intolerant are themselves proving to be intolerant. Films have become a soft target for anybody to accuse and abuse anybody to get instant publicity.”

But guess who’s having the last laugh? The Netflix brand has suddenly gained exceptional momentum in India. People are logging in to see what all the fuss is about. While the derogatory mention of the Congress leader is just a passing utterance, what really gets our attention is the series’ insouciant faith in the language of lascivious liberalism. There are two lengthy sequences of Nawazuddin having noisy sweaty anal sex with female partners (so don’t jump to conclusions). A committed actor that he is, Nawaz must have undertaken lengthy bouts of rehearsals before plunging in.

Ooof. The things one has to do to be true to one’s job. It would be hard for audiences to see him play the iconic litterateur Saadat Hasan Manto after watching him defile the female anatomy with such unaesthetic brutality. But then perhaps knowing how sexually liberated he was, Manto may have approved.