Ever since its release, ‘Sacred Games’ is embroiled in controversies. It is an adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s novel ‘Sacred Games’ and directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane. The series is about the life and rise of Indian criminal Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), and the police officer Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan) who is trying to save the city after receiving a disturbing late-night phone call warning him that Mumbai will be destroyed in 25 days. Though it is a fictional work, it refers to historical events of the violence between Hindus and Muslims and how politics played its game over it. Events that are mentioned in it include the Bofors Scandal, the Mandal Commission, and the 1993 Bombay Riots.
(Image Courtesy: Netflix)
Sacred Games landed itself in a soup when the members of the Indian National Congress Party filed petitions to the police complaining about a scene in episode four. In the episode, Gaitonde refers to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as a “p****”. One of the petitions called for Netflix to be taken to court. On this, Rahul Gandhi said, “ My father lived and died in the service of India. The views of a character on a fictional web series can never change that. #SacredGames.”
BJP/RSS believe the freedom of expression must be policed & controlled. I believe this freedom is a fundamental democratic right.
My father lived and died in the service of India. The views of a character on a fictional web series can never change that.#SacredGames
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 14, 2018
The legal team of Congress still went ahead and filed a petition in Delhi High Court against Netflix asking them to remove the particular scene. Earlier it was reported that Netflix didn’t replace the word. Senior advocate Chander Lal, the representative of Netflix, told the media that Netflix had no intention of changing the word. He told PTI, “My instructions are that we don’t want to change the word.”
(Image Courtesy: Netflix)
Netflix told the court that they had replaced the previous word ‘fattu’ with ‘wimp’, to describe the former Prime Minister. The next hearing in the case is in September.
Sacred Games has lots of sex, nudity, violence, and criticism of the government. The British Board of Film Classification certified Sacred Games an 18-rated series due to its content.
(Image Courtesy: Netflix)
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