Bombay Begums, Netflix’s series on urban women and their ambitions, is the latest content offering on a streaming platform that has run afoul of somebody, somewhere, sitting atop a giant turd of self righteousness and indignation. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has asked Netflix to yank the show for the “inappropriate portrayal” of children, saying such content could "pollute young minds.” That the show is rated 18+ seems to have conveniently escaped the notice of those deciding on what makes for morally acceptable content.
The notice sent by NCPCR to Netflix India over Bombay Begums.
(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)
Okay, so maybe the people on that commission have no control over what their kids watch online and it’s easier to go after the streaming platform rather than introspecting about what they’re doing wrong themselves. Also, it is becoming increasingly fashionable these days to outrage about the content on Netflix and Amazon Prime, the softest targets of all. Funny how content like Flesh (Eros Now) and Gandii Baat (ALTBalaji) are kosher and watched by millions of teenagers in this country, but put that stuff on a “foreign” platform and the rules change.
Let’s accept for a moment that the vast majority of Indian parents are pretty useless at controlling what their kids consume, and hence the need to censor everything in sight. With that in mind, let’s look at what the hullabaloo is all about. In the first of the offending scenes, a teenager Shai (Aadhya Anand) is seen drinking alcohol and taking drugs after being rejected by a boy she likes. For those who have actually watched the show, Shai’s behaviour is directly linked to the low self-esteem she suffers from. In the second of the offending scenes, Shai sees some of her more “popular” classmates clicking selfies that have sexual undertones, but there is no explicit nudity. The makers of the show have spoken about highlighting the problems of wrong teenage choices made under peer pressure, insecurity and rage.
What’s more is that the series literally spells out what a parent needs to do in these cases. The way the teenager’s stepmother Rani (Pooja Bhatt) deals with the incident—with care and compassion for her child—is the manner that child psychologists recommend for counselling children on such incidents.
However, without peeling layers of psychology here, even the most basic look at those scenes will tell you that they are a representation of society around us today. Parents who believe that this stuff only “happens in America” or “happens to others” are either still living in the last century or are wearing blinkers. It might be convenient to ignore the truth of society’s declining morals when one has children, but avoiding these conversations is just bad parenting in this day and age. A good parent will try and understand what’s going on in the world around, and prepare their children to deal with issues of insecurity, body image and depression.
A little over a year ago, a premier International school suspended eight of its male students, all between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. Their crime centred around violent and sexually charged WhatsApp chats about their female classmates. These chats had the eight boys discussing the rape of their female classmates, getting them for one night and “gang banging” them. Yes, this happened in India. In Mumbai. Amongst kids of families like yours and mine.
Five months later, an even bigger scandal rocked the country. What’s now being referred to as the Boys Locker Room scandal had male teenagers from some of the capital’s top schools sharing obscene images of their female classmates on Instagram chats and talking about sexually assaulting them. Yes, this too happened in India. In New Delhi. Amongst kids of families like yours and mine.
If it’s happening in Mumbai and Delhi, it’s fair to assume some form of this behaviour trickles down to every small town of the country. When the Boys Locker Room scandal broke out, the very same NCPCR issued a notice to Instagram. Notice a pattern here? It’s like the kids aren’t to blame for this behaviour but the platform is. And god forbid you even dare to call any of this the result of bad parenting.
In the last few months, streaming shows have come under attack and have very often been penalised for ‘hurting sentiments’. The word on the streets of Aaram Nagar is that platforms are consciously beginning to avoid stories that are even vaguely political or religious.
Bombay Begums is neither political nor religious, and still a group of people is asking Netflix to take the show out of the public domain. They don’t want the show edited in any way but completely taken off. This is where we are today as a country and society. If you don’t conform, you shouldn’t exist.
It’s fair to assume that society was way more conservative thirty years back. Back then, Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen released amidst a lot of chatter on the role of censorship in films. The makers of the biographical film based on the life of Phoolan Devi, went through a two-year battle just to get a censor certificate. And even after the film released, a case was filed to curtail the exhibition of the film in the country. While the Delhi High Court directed the CBFC to re-examine the film’s censor certificate, the Supreme Court, where the makers challenged the lower court’s order, delivered a judgment that bears remembering.
It emphasised the importance of watching a scene in the context of the film (“Bandit Queen tells a powerful human story and to that story the scene of Phoolan Devi’s enforced naked portrayal is central”). The court also cautioned against applying blanket standards (“Nakedness does not always arouse the baser instinct”). Most importantly, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a crucial filmmaking liberty:
“A film that carries the message that the social evil is evil cannot be made impermissible on the ground that it depicts the social evil”.
In Bombay Begums, burning teenage issues like substance and alcohol abuse, teenage promiscuity and body shaming are shown as social evils. When Shai realises that she’s made the wrong choices, it becomes abundantly clear to the viewers. There’s the quintessential moral at the end of this story. Or are all cautionary tales to be banned next?
Read that court judgment once again in the context of a group of people asking Netflix to take Bombay Begums out of the public domain. And then read it again.
(Karishma Upadhyay is a journalist and author of ‘Parveen Babi: A Life’. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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