The film was approved by the censors, but mobs defaced public property, thrashed people, and threw Molotov cocktails. The climate changed again in 1996, when Hindu nationalists objected to Canadian director Deepa Mehta’s film Fire, which portrays a lesbian relationship. After Gandhi was voted out in 1977, a period of relative openness followed. The press and cinema continued to be censored, most stringently from 1975 to 1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties for a 21-month period. Independence changed the nature of this repression but did not eliminate it. By the 1940s, kissing had all but disappeared from movies. By 1920 India had several regional censor boards, whose members were told to be watchful for “sensitive issues” and “forbidden scenes,” writes Someswar Bhowmik. They objected both to the “unnecessary exhibition of feminine underclothing” and to “subjects dealing with India, in which British or Indian officers are seen in an odious light,” according to journalist Uday Bhatia. The censorship of Indian films began in 1918, when the British set out to protect prudish Victorian social norms along with colonial interests. The rise of Netflix in India is a story of why technology matters: not as an end in itself, but as a means of artistic-and human-flourishing. Netflix represents a threat to the conservative, Hindu-nationalist worldview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has recently renewed a campaign of censorship and intimidation against Kashyap and others like him. Well-resourced cinema and television that can grapple with the issues of the day matter to the culture of a nation. This promise is important not just to Kashyap and other filmmakers, but to the 1.4 billion people living in India. To Kashyap, Netflix represented a promise not only of wealth but, more important, of liberty. India is often described as the world’s largest democracy, but freedom of expression has never existed there as it does in the West. “That’s why I can buy new shoes!” he said with a laugh, gesturing at his fresh high-tops with the tip of his cigarette. Netflix was so pleased, Kashyap told me, that it gave him a bonus. ISHIKA MOHAN MOTWANE / © NETFLIX / COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION Anurag Kashyap plays himself in the 2020 film AK vs AK.
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The series marked the first time that streaming in India became more than just another source of light entertainment, like YouTube, or a vehicle for international shows. To viewers exhausted by the predictable spectacles of Bollywood song and dance, Sacred Games was a thrill. His characters engaged with each other naturally-they swore, they talked politics, they had sex. Since streaming services weren’t, at the time, subject to the rules of India’s Central Board of Film Certification, Kashyap was able to transcend the grammar of Bollywood. The series, based on a novel by Vikram Chandra, a popular Indian novelist who now lives in Berkeley, California, starred A-list Hindi film actors. As soon as Season 1 landed, it was obvious that the platform had a superhit on its hands. When Netflix launched in India in 2016, it hired Kashyap to co-direct its first original series, Sacred Games, about an underworld don in Mumbai who ensnares an upright police officer. He has written, directed, and produced dozens of films for Bollywood. Kashyap has developed a cult following in India since his first Hindi film, Paanch(Five), was banned for extreme violence in 2003. Then, just as unobtrusively, Kashyap made his way behind the monitor. The actress, a former model with hooded eyes and high cheekbones, nodded without changing her position. As an assistant director shouted out instructions in Hindi and English, Kashyap had a word with his lead actress, who was lying supine on a bed in a blue hospital gown. Members of his crew, recently arrived from Mumbai, were maneuvering around vestigial baby cots and gurneys. The old maternity unit where he was filming had never been entirely cleared out. One afternoon before the pandemic, I went to a decommissioned hospital in West London to meet the Hindi film director Anurag Kashyap on the set of his new Netflix production.