A popular Indian film, which traces the journey of a young girl who aspires to become India's best chef, was removed from Netflix on Thursday (January 11) after a campaign by Hindu nationalists. They stigmatize scenes that show meat consumption as well as a romance between the Hindu heroine and a young Muslim man.
Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food, which was the second most-watched film on the Netflix platform in India the day before it was retired, chronicles the troubled journey of the daughter of a Hindu priest who dreams of becoming India's best chef and faces challenges due to her upbringing within Hinduism. She thus abandons the strict vegetarianism in which she was raised, while upper-caste Hindus abstain from eating meat.
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A fellow Muslim helps him navigate the cutthroat world of his cooking school, and the two young people fall in love with each other, finding themselves confronted with one of the most enduring taboos in Indian society, interfaith marriages being unthinkable for traditionalists. Last week, an activist who felt offended by the script filed a complaint with the police, claiming that the film promoted the "jihad of love," a derogatory phrase coined by Hindu nationalists who accuse Muslim men of marrying Hindu women and forcing them to convert to Islam.
Removing the film
Ramesh Solanki, who filed the lawsuit, said on X (ex-Twitter) that Netflix and co-producer Zee Studios had "deliberately produced this film ... to offend the feelings of the Hindus." He asked the police to prosecute the main actors in the film. A campaign calling for a boycott of the film and its immediate removal from Netflix was a dominant social media campaign for several days. The withdrawal of the film Annapoorani from Netflix in India, a few weeks after the premiere, has sparked jubilation among its critics. Shriraj Nair, spokesman for a group of Hindu activists who slammed the film, said the authors had "woken up to their mistake". "We have never interfered with the creative freedom of a film, but denigration and mockery of Hindus will never be tolerated," he wrote on X.
India has a long history of film censorship, but the film industry has gradually avoided content that may offend the religious sensibilities of Hindus whose religion is the majority in the country since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. In December, the Washington Post reported that Netflix and Amazon Prime had shelved several projects in India so as not to offend the feelings of Hindus in the officially secular country. Anurag Kashyap, a prominent director, told the newspaper that one of his adaptations was cancelled by Netflix in 2021 as part of an "invisible censorship" campaign.