{"id":7037,"date":"2016-07-05T06:49:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T01:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7037"},"modified":"2016-07-05T06:49:53","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T01:19:53","slug":"trolls-vs-tandav-hinduphobia-jnu-web-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7037","title":{"rendered":"Trolls vs Tandav"},"content":{"rendered":"\nT<\/span>oday saw the release of the Saif Ali Khan-starrer Tandav<\/em> on Amazon Prime Video. It was the first major webseries to release in 2021, and given the controversies that have dogged new releases last year, was entering dangerous waters. Unfortunately for the cast and crew of Tandav<\/em>, the online mob was waiting with pitchforks sharpened, and the series had not been streaming for even a day before accusations of it being \u201cHinduphobic<\/a>\u201d surfaced online. Judging by the social media ruckus, Tandav\u2019s greatest transgression is casting a Muslim actor in the role of Shiva, a student politician, who also appears as the diety in one scene. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayub, the actor in question, has been the subject of trolling online, especially since he has been vocal about the state of affairs in the country, joining anti-CAA protests<\/a> last year and standing by the farmers in Delhi now.\n\nThe controversy centres around a clip from the show, where Ayub plays a stage performer appearing as Lord Shiva. That much is obvious even from viewing the clip without context, but even so, there appear to many aggrieved people who believe that the makers were attempting to show the deity himself in a flippant light. And not only is the use of Shiva on-screen misinterpreted by those accusing Tandav <\/em>of offending religious sentiments, but they also seem to have a huge problem with the actor\u2019s religious identity. Not only is Ayub a Muslim, so is the series\u2019 director, Ali Abbas Zafar. In an indicator of how polarised social media is becoming, the Tandav <\/em>haters believe that Muslim artists are unable or unwilling to depict Hindu deities in good faith.\n\nLast year, both Amazon Prime Video and Netflix invited the ire of ultraconservatives because of the content on their shows, leading to calls to boycott the platforms. Netflix\u2019s A Suitable Boy<\/em><\/a> and Prime\u2019s Paatal Lok<\/a><\/em> both invited similar accusations of \u201cHinduphobia\u201d. While the former had Hindu nationalists outraging over a \u201clove jihad\u201d kiss<\/a>, Paatal Lok<\/em> was accused of glorifying \u201cbeef eating\u201d.\n\n

The Tandav<\/em> haters believe that Muslim artists are unable or unwilling to depict Hindu deities in good faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nThe atmosphere of tolerance that allows artists to freely create is no longer as vibrant, and with government censorship of online platforms a looming prospect, reactions like the one Tandav <\/em>elicited from trolls paint a picture of how stifling that might be.\n\nAlong with the controversy over the religious beliefs of the cast and crew, a secondary problem that right-wingers had with Tandav <\/em>was its sympathetic portrayal of a fictional university apparently modelled on the real-life Jawaharlal Nehru University. JNU\u2019s reputation for student politics<\/a> and activism makes it a favourite bogeyman of conservatives, and so the way Tandav chose to fold those power dynamics into its narrative made pro-establishment social media users uncomfortable.\n\nSadly, hate-filled trolls refuse to separate fact from fiction and it\u2019s becoming an almost regular part of a web series\u2019 life cycle to be faced with calls for a boycott on social media soon after its release.\n\nWhat the makers of Tandav <\/em>presumably set out to do was give audiences a thriller that painted a picture of the underbelly of Indian politics. But the reactionary, intolerant response a section of the audience had to the series illuminated the ugly side of Indian society instead.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the makers of Tandav presumably set out to do was give audiences a thriller that painted a picture of the underbelly of Indian politics. But the intolerant response to the series by trolls has illuminated the ugly side of Indian society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":7038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[10873,7989,11015,11016,10601,10758,10990],"class_list":["post-7037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-a-suitable-boy","tag-amazon-prime-video","tag-hinduphobia","tag-indian-web-series","tag-paatal-lok","tag-streaming-now","tag-tandav"],"yoast_head":"\nTrolls vs Tandav<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What the makers of Tandav presumably set out to do was give audiences a thriller that painted a picture of the underbelly of Indian politics. 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