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Cow And Beef: Comedy Central India Edited Trevor Noah's Segment On Trump's India Visit

Comedy Central India’s Facebook page posted a seemingly self-censored clip from 'The Daily Show with Trevor Noah' on Tuesday night.
Trevor Noah's segment on Trump's India visit.
Screenshot
Trevor Noah's segment on Trump's India visit.

American late night shows hosts may be having fun with US president Donald Trump’s visit to India, but Indian TV channels and online streaming platforms don’t want you to join in on it.

Comedy Central India’s Facebook page posted a clip from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Tuesday night, which cut out the host’s comments on Trump’s fondness for beef and the possibility of having to skip eating it during his India visit.

In his segment on Trump’s visit, Noah poked fun at reports that speculated the US president may have to eat vegetables since he may not be served beef.

“Cows are so sacred in India that they are allowed to just wander around in the cities. So can you imagine how hard that’s going to be for him? He hasn’t eaten beef for two days and then he’s just going to start seeing cows in the streets and he’s going to be like “oh my god, I’m hallucinating. All the cows I’ve eaten have come back to haunt me. I’m sorry cows! I’m so sorry. So sorry,” Noah said.

While this part can be seen in the full version of the segment posted on the show’s official YouTube channel, in the Facebook clip, you can spot the point at which it has been edited out at the 4.10 mark on the video.

And while Comedy Central India edited out Noah’s comments (badly), streaming platform Hotstar completely skipped over uploading an episode of the HBO show Last Week Tonight hosted by John Oliver. The show’s latest episode was a stinging critique of Narendra Modi and his controversy-riddled tenure as India’s prime minister.

New episodes are usually available on Hotstar India at 6 a.m. every Tuesday, but weren’t this week. A representative for the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry told Bloomberg the government wasn’t involved in the matter.

Hotstar is owned by Disney and is the largest on-demand video streaming service in India.

The Last Week Tonight episode is available on the show’s official YouTube channel.

HuffPost India has reached out to Hotstar and Viacom18, which owns Comedy Central India, for comments and will update the story with their response.

Last year, Amazon India removed an episode of the show Madam Secretary from Prime Video in India. The episode had made references to references to Hindu nationalism, Hindu extremists, majoritarian violence against Muslim citizens and “India-occupied Kashmir”, Firstpost reported.

Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern, three times is a habit?

In 2018, the Delhi High Court said it did not want to curtail anyone’s right while hearing a plea asking for certain “objectionable” scenes to be removed from Netflix India’s original series Sacred Games. “Criticism or even expression of dissatisfaction is permissible,” the court had said.

The same year, Netflix famously removed an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s show Patriot Act which criticised Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, but only for its Saudi audience.

Minhaj tweeted: “Clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube.”

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.