Indian cartoonist's arrest exposes 'world's largest democracy'


The guy on the handle is wearing the sort of dress that Indian politicians wear. 

CARTOONISTS are a powerful bunch. They can bring down governments, in particular large, functional and blameless democracies, and therefore they must be stopped.

This, at least, must have been the reasoning behind this week's arrest by the Indian police of young cartoonist Aseem Trivedi. The government must have been very afraid of him. He has depicted (some months ago, as it happens) such subversive images as the national Parliament as a toilet, gang rape of "mother India" by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats (nothing too graphic there - just her being held and the blokes in suits being encouraged by the monster, corruption. Even another of his drawings, of "politics" and "corruption" in flagrante "69" is rather tastefully rendered as those little artists' articulated wooden figures for drawing).

For a wicked cartoonist intent on bringing down his government, he hasn't been very sneaky. Going under the banner of Cartoons Against Corruption, he's clearly up to no good, but easy to find.

A lawyer has brought these offensive and dangerous cartoons to the attention of the authorities, who are taking appropriate action. He has been charged with sedition - understandably! - and now been released on bail but is fighting to have charges dropped. What is surprising is that those cartoons can have been out there for so long without having actually brought down the Indian government!
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My own view is that, if a government, even a corrupt, flawed one, wants to give the impression of being a democracy (especially the "world's largest democracy"), it should be able to risk the damage wrought by cartoonists. The chances are, if the cartoonist is wrong, he or she won't get much of a following. And if the cartoons have a tiny basis in truth, better not to draw such attention by trying to suppress them. This gives quite moderate political cartoons far more reach than they might have had, and draws sympathy for the cartoonist's right to expression.

An Algerian cartoonist friend told me of how he was regularly brought before the court for offending his country's government. He had the odd week in the slammer but was mostly let off with a warning. Now, Algeria isn't the greatest democracy, but its powerful know well enough that suppressing a cartoonist makes the populace far more suspicious about what's being hidden, than the reassuring sight of a cartoon poking fun at a world they might otherwise find intolerable.

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I don't usually report on events in India but its British traditions give it some relevance to the rest of the Anglosphere.  As in  Britain itself  these days, speech in India can be pretty restricted but the report above suggests some hope -- JR