John Oliver recently criticised India’s Hotstar for “self-censoring” his much-talked-about episode on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The episode was taken down by the OTT platform for being too critical of the Prime Minister and his policies including the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
In the episode aired on Sunday in the US, Oliver said
“That episode actually did not air in India. A lot of our viewers alerted us of the fact that Hotstar, the streaming service that broadcast us in India, never uploaded that episode in India. There is no evidence that the Indian government made them do that.”
The Last Week Tonight host who is well-known for his matter-of-fact speeches condemned the streaming platform for indulging in self-censoring and said it was a “not a good idea at all”.
Oliver also responded to the Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami’s rant against him and called him the “Tucker Carlson of India”.
Mr “Nation-Wants-To-Know” Goswami called Oliver “ignoramus of exceedingly global proportions” and a “third rate TV host” who had “embarrassed himself” with the episode on Modi.
To this, the Emmy-winning host responded in the best possible away as he stated: “I’m beyond the capacity for shame. You can’t hurt me!”
Acknowledging that this was not the first time the Disney-owned Hotstar had censored one of his episodes, Oliver displayed his witty self with this reply.
Referring to the character he voiced in The Lion King he said,
Everything that comes out of this beak is a ‘Disney Fact.’ If I say that Cogsworth (from Beauty and the Beast) collects Nazi memorabilia, guess what? That’s canon, baby… And for the foreseeable future, Hotstar, you can look forward to learning a lot more of them on this show because we’re going to be sliding them into our stories like Chip and Dale slid into Richard Gere. That’s right — ‘Disney Fact’
While the episode has not aired in India yet, viewers have shared a few clips on various social media platforms. You can catch one here:
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