In another instance of self-censorship, Disney owned streaming service Hotstar decided not to release the latest episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, in which the comedian and the host ripped through PM Narendra Modi’s administration, calling it “really dangerous”.
The episodes typically go up at 6 am each Tuesday in India on Hotstar. However, when subscribers logged in on 25 February on the platform owned by Walt Disney Co., they could only find older episodes. The Quint has reached out to Hotstar for an official statement on the matter.
In the latest episode, available on YouTube, Oliver previews President Donald Trump’s visit to India. Oliver referred to PM Modi’s image as a “temporary symbol of hate”, drawing comparison of it to the Taj Mahal, an “enduring symbol of love”. Focused on the CAA-NRC controversy, the episode also throws light on the nationwide protests against the same, and attacks on minority communities.
Terming CAA-NRC as a “diabolically clever two-step way” to “strip millions of Muslims of citizenship”, Oliver went on to hail the protests against CAA and NRC as a “glimmer of hope”.
This isn’t the first example of self-censorship by the streaming platforms. In November 2019, Amazon Prime India took down CBS show Madam Secretary’s first episode of season 5, due to its references to Hindu nationalism and Hindu extremists. The episode, titled ‘E Pluribus Unum’ is tagged as ‘video currently unavailable’ while the other episodes are available for playing.
Earlier, Netflix had also removed one of the episodes of The Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj which talked about the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, reportedly after complaints by Saudi Arabia.
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