“If you don’t give us the new name, we will not permit the film to be released,” said the Supreme Court of India while asking Netflix to change the title “Ghooskhor Pandat” of its upcoming film. According to Bar and Bench’s reports, advocates representing Netflix said they haven’t decided on the new title, but they assured, “There will not be any conflict.”
While Netflix India removed the promotional first look from its YouTube channel, at the time of writing this report, the film’s producer’s YouTube channel, Friday Storytellers, still streams the first look as an unlisted video, meaning it does not appear in search results.
Don’t make too much of it: SC
While acknowledging the right to freedom of speech and expression of the creators, the Supreme Court also reminded them that the freedom is not absolute, Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said:
“Why can’t there be a restraint when you try to make this kind of division when there are already fissures in the society? Why should you denigrate anybody? Why should you denigrate a section of society by this kind of title? Being woke is one thing. But denigrating the public and creating this kind of unrest. You are adding to the unrest.” – SC
Advocates representing the Brahman Samaj said that renaming the film is not enough and that the film’s narrative itself portrayed religious practices in a “negative light” by referring to a bribe as “dakshina”, a traditional offering or donation given to priests. However, the court didn’t endorse this argument, noting that there is “no pandit or pujari in that film”, and asked counsel to stop making “too much of it”.
The Supreme Court will resume the hearing in this case on February 19.
A short timeline of events:
“We understand that the title of the film has caused hurt to some viewers, and we genuinely acknowledge those feelings. In light of these concerns, we have decided to take down all promotional materials for the time being, as we believe the film should be experienced in its entirety and understood in the context of the story we intended to tell, rather than judged on partial glimpses.” – Neeraj Pandey
- February 10: After Mahender Chaturvedi filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court (HC), Netflix said it would rename the title. The court also ordered the removal of all promotional content from social media.
- February 12: While hearing another plea, by Atul Mishra, National Organisation Secretary of Brahman Samaj of India, the Supreme Court of India also ordered the renaming of the title of the Netflix release.
The ‘Tandav’ Case of Hurting Sentiments:
Netflix is not the only Over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform to land in the religion-related political controversy. Earlier, in 2021, the infamous Amazon Prime India ‘Tandav’ controversy also involved alterations to OTT content following the Allahabad High Court’s…
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