It seemed like Last Week Tonight’s episode on Narendra Modi was the last mention of India we’d see on John Oliver’s HBO show for a while, given that the show focuses on well-researched episodes that often don’t get space in the fast-paced cycle of everyday, mainstream news.
But Arnab Goswami (and Hotstar) ensured we caught Oliver’s eye again.
On this Sunday’s episode, Oliver lambasted Goswami’s coverage of the HBO show’s episode on Modi from two weeks ago.
The comedian also found that the Modi episode had not aired in India and had some choice words for Hotstar’s self censorship.
Again, this episode is not on Hotstar, but fans have uploaded clips onto Twitter.
Oliver began with comments on “some die hard Modi supporters like Arnab Goswami, the Tucker Carlson of India” who did not enjoy his episode on the Indian prime minister.
Goswami had called Oliver an “ignoramus of exceedingly global proportions” who had embarrassed himself with the show, to which Oliver replied with a string of comedic flexes and a strident “I’m beyond the capacity for shame. You can’t hurt me!”
Watch below:
He then went on to call out Hotstar for not letting viewers in India watch the episode. The show host said there was no evidence that the Indian government had made the streaming platform do it. “As best we can tell, Hotstar just decided to self censor, which is not good.”
Oliver said his team had now realised this had been happening for a while
“Why did they do that? It’s hard to say, but it might be because Hotstar is actually owned by Disney, and they seem extra-sensitive about Disney references (being made on the show).”
He then said: “And let me say this to Hotstar right now. If you think that you have to remove anything that reflects poorly on Disney from this show, I have some bad news for you, my friend. I’m fucking Zazu right here,” referring to the character he voiced in the live-action Disney film, The Lion King.
“Everything that comes out of this beak is a ‘Disney Fact.’ If I say that Cogsworth (from Beauty and the Beast) collects Nazi memorabilia, guess what? That’s canon, baby. That’s a ‘Disney fucking Fact’ right there. And for the foreseeable future, Hotstar, you can look forward to learning a lot more of them on this show because we’re going to be sliding them into our stories like Chip and Dale slid into Richard Gere. That’s right — ‘Disney Fact,’ motherfuckers.”
Huffpost India has reached out to Hotstar for a comment and will update this story when they respond.