Paatal Lok, the Amazon series produced by Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma which has been receiving rave reviews, is also being lashed out for its derogatory portrayal of different communities, especially the women of those communities and also for perpetuating Hinduphobic content.
Members of the Gorkha community in India condemned the series and its producer for the use of racial and sexist slurs portraying the community’s women in bad light and have demanded that Amazon mute the slur, blur the subtitles and upload the edited video along with a disclaimer and an unconditional apology.
The scene occurring in episode 2 of the first season at 3:41 has an inspector physically and verbally abusing a person of Nepali origin calling the person a prostitute and asking her how many foreigners has she slept with.
This is utterly disgraceful @RajuBistaBJP @R_Bastola @OyeKeta #banpaatallok
We demand the concerned authority to delete the scene &ban Paatallok https://t.co/vpa7WoTHyy— Jeevan Pokhrel (@JeevanP52977956) May 17, 2020
The Bharatiya Gorkha Yuva Parisangh has initiated an online petition to Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar. The petition stated that the character was named Mary Lyngdoh (a common surname in Khasi community of Meghalaya) and asserted that the abuse hurled at her by the policewoman in the scene didn’t just insult the Nepali community but was also an example of wider racist stereotyping of people from north-east India.
In another episode, a conversation between a couple carries casteist slurs. The man asks the woman over the phone “Does the oldie know that his Brahmin daughter likes to f*** a low caste?”
Netizens called out the brazen attack on these communities and came down heavily on the series and its producer for inciting hatred, with #BanPaatalLok trending on twitter. Many have branded the series as a propaganda material that propagates “Hinduphobia” in the name of countering “Islamophobia”.
This is the language they use for Upper Caste women. No feminist will shed her tears. There will be no outrage. Upper caste women's womb and vagina have become the battleground for them.
This is disgusting. pic.twitter.com/zANjAUqjsz
— Tapasya (@TokyoDrankMyTea) May 18, 2020
Paatal lok by @AnushkaSharma's production house is such a crap! It's just based on a fake anti Hindu propaganda just to mislead and create hate against hindus! #BanPaatalLok
— Ankit Chauhan (@AnkitChauhan981) May 17, 2020
Please stop producing such series where you show hatred between communities. Are they doing this to gain cheap popularity or for money? Please do not do propaganda and show something on such platform that generates hatred. This show must be banned. #banpaatallok
— VoiceOfIndia (@Chandankiit05) May 18, 2020