After facing backlash on social media for depicting the daughter of a Hindu priest eating meat, Netflix decided to remove the Indian film Annapoorani from its platform. Nevertheless, Hindus are known to have the largest religious grouping and Hindu priests as well as their families are typical vegetarians.
Soon after the movie was released in theatres, it aired on Netflix the same month. However, owing to the rising trolls and backlash for the film, it is no longer available on the international streaming platform.
Nevertheless, the representatives in India did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On 10 January 2024, protestors from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a Hindu extremist with connections from the Bharatiya Janata Party, slammed Netflix, and shouted slogans against the OTT giant and the film at the Company’s Mumbai Office, according to a social media post.
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Meanwhile, the film depicts a story of the daughter of a Hindu temple priest in Tamil Nadu who eats meat. Following in the same film, she was seen cooking meat in a high-stakes cooking contest.
Ramesh Solanki, who names himself as the head of an organisation called “Hindu IT Cell” claims that he had filed a complaint to Mumbai police about the film, citing the scenes that might be offensive to Hindus.
Besides OTT giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ Hotstar, often receive criticism from right-wing groups in India.
In a similar series of incident, in 2021, Amazon offered an apology for one of the offending scenes in Tandav.
The OTT giants, Netflix and Amazon have become hugely popular in India, and is further set to grow into a $7 billion market for the sector by 2027, according to a renowned media house, Media Partners Asia.
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