It was just another Sunday afternoon when I was watching a rerun of one of the episodes of my favourite sitcom, Games of Thrones , when I heard the beeping of the word ‘fuck’ & ‘bastard’ throughout the entire episode. In the 21st century, it is hard to believe that the ‘ombudsmen’s of our Indian society would believe the audience to be this easily excitable when exposed to this word. Not only is it inconvenient for the viewers to watch the same, but it also downrightly rejects their level of intelligence. Recently, the English subtitles for British and American TV content
broadcast on Indian channels have been subjected to ridiculous self-censorship for fear of a government confrontation and crackdown. If viewers are offended by the content, they can make a complaint, and the result of these complaints can be quite disastrous for channels.
 

Words like ‘Fucker’, ‘Sex’, ‘Bastard’, etc. that are all deemed offensive by one channel or the other are either entirely muted, or changed in subtitles during an episode airing nowadays. For instance, unless and until the content show is seen under the light of ‘education’, IBF guidelines are against the showing of nudity, and even the depiction of movements of sexual activity. This made watching the early seasons of Game of Thrones on Indian television next to impossible, which prompted viewers to turn to the Internet and find out what exactly followed up whilst the scene, was censored. While watching suits on comedy central, these people beeped out the word "dick" while the character was talking about book "Moby dick”.
 

GENIUS ain't it?

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The entire practice is done in the name of protecting the kids from stumbling across any ‘objectionable’ content on television. More than the television’s responsibility to do so, it is parents who should be looking into what their children should be exposed to. As a free adult, if I want to see two adults talking about sex as openly as they do in the West, I don’t think I should be deprived of that. Moreover, this kind of censorship is only resulting in producing a generation of people who would have skewed notions about important issues, and will look down upon such problems.
 

India will become a country where nobody will talk about sex and diseases, sex-related health issues and drug problems will conveniently be swept under the carpet, hidden from all eyes instead of being understood and addressed. Such activities will only produce couch potatoes who will still consider sex a dirty word, and believe skin show in public is still something good girls do not engage in, and despite legal cognizance, homosexuals are by and large still not acceptable and normal.

 

After receiving numerous complaints from viewers as well as the National Commission for Women and social activists who accused the channels of showing explicit content, shows like Bigg Boss and RakhikaInsaaf were allowed to only air between 11 PM and 5 AM.
 

As India is trying to sell itself as a global power today, Indian censorship in television, practised through arbitrary laws and rules, will serve to turn the clock back on the country’s social and economic progress. India has around 125 million people who speak English, out of which many in urban India follow American shows and watch Hollywood movies.