Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government on Monday wrote to the Union government seeking a ban on the second season of the Amazon Prime web series ‘The Family Man’ starring Manoj Bajpayee.
In a letter to Union minister for information and broadcasting Prakash Javadekar, the state government said the web series “depicts the Eelam Tamils in a highly objectionable manner’. Information Technology Minister T Mano Thangaraj’s letter called the web series “condemnable” and “malicious”.
On Sunday, MDMK leader Vaiko had made a similar plea to Mr Javadekar and earlier Naam Tamilar Katchi leader Seeman sought a ban on its release.
Contending that the contents of said series in Hindi was “condemnable, inappropriate and malicious”, he said the recently released trailer was aimed at discrediting and distorting the historical struggle of Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka.
According to a report by The Hindu, “The sacrifices of their long drawn out democratic battle has been intentionally undermined and it could not, by any stretch of imagination considered merely as a serial with any value for Tamil Culture. Moreover, a serial, which is loaded with insults and insinuations against the glorious Tamil culture could never be considered as the one having any broadcasting value,” Mr. Thangaraj contended.
For instance, “branding Tamil-speaking actress Samantha as a terrorist” in the serial was directly an attack on the pride of Tamils living around the world and no one would tolerate this kind of motivated and mischievous campaign, he said. The trailer “has already evoked strong and widespread opposition from the people of Tamil Nadu as well as from the political parties in the State,” he said.
The LTTE, founded by Velupillai Prabhakaran in 1976 to create an independent Tamil Eelam out of Sri Lanka, was banned in India after former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assasination in May 1991.
Why the outrage against Family Man S2 trailer?
People who have raised objections against Family Man 2 feel that Samantha’s militant character is being branded as a terrorist and that the Tamil community is being portrayed as terrorists. Samantha’s character seems to be fighting for an independent state for Ethnic Tamils, a spill-over of the 1983 conflict which stemmed in Sri Lanka where government forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were in conflict.
Towards the end of the decades-long Sri Lankan civil war, the LTTE had effectively formed a functioning military state, with its own infrastructure, in the northern Tamil majority region of the island. And the town of Kilinochchi was its capital.
About Family Man Season 2
The award-winning series marks the digital debut of South superstar Samantha Akkineni who joins the stellar ensemble cast including Bajpayee, Priyamani, along with incredible talent from across India, including Sharib Hashmi, Seema Biswas, Darshan Kumar, Sharad Kelkar, Sunny Hinduja, Shreya Dhanwantary, Shahab Ali, Vedant Sinha and Mahek Thakur.
