Disney-owned Hotstar seems to have censored the latest episode of HBO’s popular talk show Last Week Tonight, which is centred around Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to Hotstar, new episodes of the show hosted by John Oliver, are uploaded every Tuesday at 6 AM. However, at the time of writing this story, the episode still hasn’t gone up on the platform. We have reached out to Hotstar to understand the reasons behind censoring the entire episode. In the episode, which is available on the show’s YouTube channel, Oliver talked about the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, and said that the PM Modi-led government, “has pursued a steadily escalating persecution of religious minorities”. He also called the Prime Minister a “Hindu nationalist”, and added that addressing him as the “father of India” is “stupid at best and dangerous at worst”. Oliver also touched upon the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and talked about the organisation's founding fathers' admiration for Adolf Hitler. Not the first case of censorship: This isn’t the first time that Hotstar has censored content on its platform. In November 2019, it had reportedly censored jokes made on Disney, its owners, by Oliver on Last Week Tonight. In January 2019, it had taken down the Koffee with Karan episode featuring cricketers Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul. Amazon Prime had also removed an episode of Madam Secretary last year in India. The episode reportedly had references to Hindu nationalism. Netflix had pulled down an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act in Saudi…
