Outside The Realm Of Sacred Snips

Sacred Games underlines the power of freedom in the digital space

- Giridhar Jha

IT is the glasnost Indian film-makers had been waiting for since ages. A mighty censor board, notorious for stamping out any creative flicker not in conformity with its moth- eaten guidelines, appears to be facing an existential crisis.

Accustomed to snipping anything ‘obn oxious’ on screen, its very raison d’être has come under the scanner now with the advent of over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix, which have started streaming Indian original content without needing any certification from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), the long-standing watchdog of Indian cinema.

There’s nothing illegal about it. An ‘independent’ digital world already enables the film-makers to show whatever they want, without having to abide by any archaic norms. It’s an era of unl imited freedom, which the movie makers of successive generations were deprived of ever since the Cinematograph Act came into force 100 years ago, and that’s almost the entire history of Indian cinema itself.

Making the most of this freedom in the Indian market is Netflix, which unleashed its first original Indian web series, Sacred Games, on July 6, underlining the fact that the censor board has ceased to be the ultimate arbi ter of what should or should not be shown on screen. Based on Vikram Chandra’s 2006-bestseller by the same name, Sacred Games is replete with no-holds-barred sex scenes, including frontal nudity, unabashed use of violence, cuss words and, above all, contentious references to various volatile political events of the past—just the sort of material the censor board has always gleefully chopped off.

The content of the eight-part Netflix series has, as expected, kic ked up a storm, inv ited lawsuits and fuelled demands to bring all digital content under a reg ulatory authority, such as the CBFC.