New Delhi:A Jewish organisation has written to Amazon Prime, asking it to remove the recently released Bollywood film 'Bawal' from its streaming service platform, media reports said.
The Jewish human rights organisation Simon Weisenthal Centre issued a statement saying that 'Auschwitz should not be used as a metaphor because it is a perfect example of the human capacity for evil'.
The organisation has alleged that the genocide of the Jews (Holocaust) has been 'depicted in a senseless manner' in the film.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has said that the 'systematic murder and torture of millions of people' is shown in a very light way in the film.The way the Holocaust has been used in this romantic drama film has been criticised by many people in India as well.
But the actors and director of the film have termed this criticism unfair.This film was released on Prime Video last Friday. Cinema critics and audiences have criticised the scenes and dialogues in which the hero's love story has been compared to the Holocaust.
The film includes a fantasy scene in a gas chamber and uses Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the Auschwitz death camp as a metaphor.The lead roles in the story are played by popular actors Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor. They are playing the role of a newly married couple travelling to Europe.
Hero is a history teacher, and his aim is to introduce his students to World War II through an Instagram Reel. The heroine is trying to make one last effort to save her marriage.
A website that tracks Bollywood performances has declared 'Bawal a commercial hit.According to this, 60 to 70 lakh people have seen it so far. On Thursday, it was included in the 'Top Ten India' list on the Prime Video app.
This is a reference to the largest death camp in Nazi Germany where about one million Jews were killed.This horror camp was recreated, where these two are shown in a gas chamber, where people around them are suffocating and screaming.
The statement said, "Director Nitesh Tiwari, by making the protagonist in the film say that – every relationship passes through its Austrias – has made a mockery of the killing of six million people and demeans the memory of those who were killed by Hitler. Tortured at the hands of the genocidal power."
According to it, "if the filmmaker's aim was to film fantasy scenes of Nazi death camps in the film to gain publicity, he has succeeded."
In the statement, Amazon Prime has been asked to immediately stop the monetization of this film and remove it from the platform.
Although the filmmaker hasn't given any statement on this yet, Dhawan had earlier said in an interview that people make a big fuss out of small things in Hindi films, while in English films they don't say anything about big things.
Director Nitesh Tiwari had said that films should not be watched so closely because then you will see some problem or another in every scene.(UNI)
