New Delhi: With a stinging swipe at the BJP, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday appeared to disapprove demands to censor uncharitable references to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the web series Sacred Games.
Mr Gandhi said unlike the BJP, he did not believe that the freedom of expression should be policed and remarks by a fictional character in Sacred Games would not change his father’s contribution to the country.
“My father lived and died in the service of India. The views of a character on a fictional web series can never change that,” Mr Gandhi tweeted on Saturday.
The Congress president, who is often critical of the BJP and its ideological mentor, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, or RSS, said these two organisations “believe the freedom of expression must be policed and controlled. I believe this freedom is a fundamental democratic right”.
Mr Gandhi’s support for freedom of expression comes against the backdrop of police complaints and petitions filed by leaders of his party.
One petition in the Delhi high court wants the judges to order the makers of the show including directors Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, as well as actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the online platform Netflix to take down the series. Elsewhere, complaints filed with the police asked that they should be prosecuted.
Spread across most episodes of the show, Sacred Games talks about certain incidents in India’s political history including Rajiv Gandhi’s alleged role in the Bofors scam, the Congress government’s controversial forced sterilisation scheme under Indira Gandhi’s tenure, and Rajiv Gandhi’s involvement in the Shah Bano case.
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The show has been termed by Netflix as dark and gritty, which it justifies by showing scenes with strong violence, frontal nudity, and character emotions