Sacred Games is making a whole lot of headlines, but recently more so for the controversies that it has created. The series that is streaming on Netflix has recently created a lot of furore when a Congress leader filed an FIR against the makers, the lead star Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the service for making fun of the late PM Rajiv Gandhi. If you have seen the show, you know that Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a fictional gangster who is on the rise in the '80s and the '90s in Mumbai and therefore this gives an opportunity for the show to mirror the happenings in the country during the era. So in one scene, Gaitonde mentions how Rajiv Gandhi is involved in the Bofors scandal that rocked the Congress in the '80s. Then mentioning the Shah Bano case, Gaitonde calls the former PM fattu (coward) for his stand on Muslim women's right to alimony. It is interesting to note that the subtitles in the scene referred to him as p***y instead of the simple 'coward'.
However, it is not just the former PM that Sacred Games takes digs at. From what we saw, the show even makes snide references to Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, without taking their names of course.
Sacred Games has two supporting characters in Karan Wahi's Karan Malhotra and Elnaaz Norouzi's Zoya Mirza that brings the references to the abovementioned star. Karan Malhotra is shown as a brattish, coke-snorting, abusive superstar with a huge ego who tries to control his girlfriend. Now these qualities don't confine to just one star, right? But later, in a scene, the girlfriend tells a top cop that Karan had killed two men in a hit-n-run case. Now does that ring a bell? Moreover, the reason why he is shown jealousy towards his girlfriend is that she has signed a film with Ranbir Kapoor. Make what you want of that! Interestingly, the show's other lead, Saif Ali Khan, is said to be close to Salman, even though we are not sure what their rapport is after Bhai replaced Saif in Race 3.
As for the girlfriend, who is a top actress herself, she is seen to hold a passport from a different country, and her origins are shown in the series as vague. Like Zoya, even Katrina's nationality was under question once upon a time, as she was reported holding a British passport. There are also rumours that she had been lying about the fact that her father is Indian, and she is half-Kashmiri by birth.
After watching Sacred Games, fans were quick to point this out -
Well played @varungrover. #SacredGames pic.twitter.com/rmtfoeFhPq
— SAGAR (@sagarcasm) July 11, 2018
So who has pieced Katrina kaif inspiration on#SacredGames
— TheSammyDRAMA (@ShettyONTHErun) July 9, 2018
This fan, however, calls out the show for taking digs at Rajiv Gandhi and Salman Khan, but not at LK Advani and the late Bal Thackeray, despite the 1992 riots being a major part of the show. This may also be, because Gaitonde is a Brahmin, who by the end of the riots, had turned into a Muslim hater, and therefore might have supported the Hindu forces. Or like the user says, the makers were scared to take a dig at these personalities.
It’s easy to mention Rajiv Gandhi million times or take a dig at Salman Khan but not even a single mention of Bal Thackeray, Advani or Modi. The politics of Sacred Games is pile of shit.
— Solo Dolo (@Rehmaanism) July 10, 2018
Maybe we have to watch the show a second time to catch which all real-life personalities Sacred Games take a dig.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 11, 2018 04:59 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).