Pehredaar Piya Ki is a recent TV serial running on prime time (8:30PM) on Sony. The story revolves around a nine year old boy being married to an eighteen year old girl which also shows the ‘couple’ going on a honeymoon. Understandably , it’s story has led to a nationwide outrage and a petition was started to ban the series which garnered over 100,000 signatures and was subsequently sent to the Information & Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani. The petition was met with a prompt response by Smriti Irani who instructed the BCCC for an urgent hearing on the issue. In what can be said a partial victory, the BCCC in turn announced that the show will be allowed to run only if Sony moves the show to the 10PM slot and with more disclaimers.
Source:- http://www.ibtimes.co.in/pehredar-piya-ki-controversy-no-ba…
However, the lead actress of the show defended the show saying people are judging a book by its cover and most of the people who have signed the petition have never watched the show. So, I decided to watch the show in an attempt to try and understand the hullabaloo around the show. So is the show really that bad it needs to be banned?
In the first episode itself we meet a nine year old prince named Ratan who is stalking Diya, daughter of his father’s best friend. Now, many people have raised objections to stalking being glorified in Bollywood movies like Ranjhanaa as it sets a bad precedent and various cases have been reported of stalking and harassment where the stalkers have been found to be inspired by Bollywood movies. Now, everyone has the Right to Freedom of speech and expression but when a show which involves a 9 year old boy stalking a woman double his age and that too running at prime time is sure to have severe repercussions.
The writing standards of the show are so down that it would even put the speech writers of Rahul Gandhi to shame. Ratan loses his mother and his father is gravely injured due to a bomb blast which was done by the rivals of his parents in a bid to usurp their family wealth. But the nine year old Ratan has apparently not an ounce of remorse for his deceased mother but all he can focus is stalking and falling in love for a woman who is already engaged. Instead of asking his friend to adopt Ratan, his father asks Diya’s dad to marry her daughter to Ratan which he duly agrees to. Feminism? Equal Rights? Anyone?
Source:- https://www.thequint.com/…/pehredaar-piya-ki-tv-review-bad-…
Just when you think the show can’t get any worse, it threatens to redefine the word rock bottom. On insistence of Diya’s in laws who happen to be evil by the way , Ratan and Diya are forced to share a bed on their first night. What’s worse is that Ratan asks Diya to hold his hand if she feels scared. Are women really that weak that they need protection from toddlers? Just when women worldwide and especially India are struggling to get equality, coming up of shows like Pehredaar Piya Ki will only add insult to the injury.
The show has all the stereotypes Indian women are trying to fight off since ages. When found drinking tea by Ratan, Diya is told to quit drinking tea as it would make her dark skinned. The obsession of Indians with fair skin is well known and this will only worsen the situation. From multiple scenes of Ratan caressing Diya and his obsession for Diya and their “honeymoon” which thankfully did not involve the two leads romancing each other , this is Indian television at it’s worst. I could go on and on about how much regressive this show is but without getting into the details of the show let us take a look why shows like Pehredaar Piya Ki must be banned.
The practice of young girls being married off to much older men is not unheard of, and is still the norm in certain cultures, incompatible though it may be with modernity. This show, however, brings a new twist to inappropriate relationships: it features a young boy ‘romancing’ an older woman — rather like a typical filmi stalker romeo — getting married to her, and even having a ‘suhaag raat’ and a honeymoon with her. While many of us recognise the necessity and rightly so to protect girls but most of us just assume that the boys are completely safe but the reality is quite the contrary.
Now we all know the condition of women of our country especially in rural areas but sadly have we ever talked about boys being abused? A 2007 survey sponsored by the Women and Child Development Ministry and carried out by Prayas, UNICEF and Save the Children found that 53.22% of children in India reported facing some form of sexual abuse, with over 50% of those victims being boys. Another study in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry found that, “Unlike females who often get abused in a heterosexual context, males tend to be abused by men leading to confusion in the sexual orientation of the victims, many of them doubting if they are homosexuals. Patriarchy further condemns homosexuals as less of men, delaying disclosure further. Homophobia can lead to over sexualised behaviour in the male survivors and boys tend to blame themselves more than girls for not being able to stop the abuse.” An NCBI report in 2013 confirmed the same that sexual abuse is under-recognised and reported when the victims are boys.
Now this is not a debate on which gender is abused more but reiterates the point that young boys are equally vulnerable. Boys are abused both by other males and older women. The sad reality in India is that losing virginity to an older woman is perceived something as a huge accomplishment . Boys who are on the threshold of their puberty bear the brunt of this perceived motion and have to undergo various abuses because of it. We all have been teenagers once , a period in which more often then not we take impulsive decisions driven by hormones, fighting with our parents who we think don’t understand us and hence making us ripe for the picking. The serial also shows Ratan who decides to drink Palak soup so that he can hit his puberty early and can have ‘normal’ relations with Diya. This is both patriarchal and vulgar. The show tries to normalise a marriage between a child and an adult with the assumption that they will have ‘normal’ relations in future which clearly makes it unfit for broadcasting on national television.
It is appalling that the same channel which airs shows like Crime Patrol also airs Pehredaar Piya Ki.
(https://www.buzzfeed.com/…/too-many-of-indias-young-boys-su…)
This brings us toward another important point , how far can the Right to Freedom of speech and expression be stretched? Agreed that this right must be absolute and this is the single most important Right which separates a democratic country from a non democratic one. The makers are trying to hide under the blanket of this Right not knowing that airing such a regressive show at family time can only prove to be counter productive .
Thanks to the quick intervention of Smriti Irani, the show at least has been removed from the prime time slot.
But can we bank on the government to bail us out everytime someone decided to test the limits of their Right to Freedom of expression and free speech? We need a proper mechanism to prevent another tragedy like Pehredaar Piya Ki. While something like the Pahlaj Nihalani mechanism is a strict no but we need a mechanism that differentiates between Lipstick Under My Burqa and Pehredaar Piya Ki.
Raju Hirani and Ranbir Kapoor who happen to be highly successful in their respective fields have teamed up for a biopic on Sanjay Dutt who incidentally happens to be a convicted criminal, who had a hand in killing of hundreds of Indians. Now, I will reserve my judgement on the biopic till I watch the movie but what if the movie tries to project Sanjay Dutt in a good way and tries to change how the public views him like it happened in case of ‘Azhar’? What if the movie tries to forgive him of all his sins? Sanjay Dutt surely wouldn’t have allowed someone to make a biopic on him only to allow to them to defame and disgrace him. If the movie tries to project his non-existent human side, it will be a travesty of justice and who knows a biopic showing the ‘human’ side of ISIS might be next in the pipeline for some Bollywood director.
Yes, the Right to Freedom of expression and speech must be absolute but on one hand demanding ban on shows like Pehredaar Piya Ki but allowing a biopic on some convicted terrorist only exposes our hypocrisy. The country needs a mechanism that filters out shows and movies like these because one thing is certain, the makers of such regressive content will never take responsibility if something wrong happens in our country due to their content.