An anti-corruption cartoonist in India has been arrested for sedition.
Mr Trivedi was arrested on Saturday for a series of cartoons lampooning politicians. He refused to apply for bail at Monday’s hearing, and said if telling the truth made him a traitor then he was happy to be described as one.
Cartoons lampooning politicians – if there’s anything you’re supposed to be able to do without interference from the state, it’s lampooning politicians.
Government officials say that while they are in favour of free speech, there is a thin line between that and insulting national symbols, the BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi reports.
No…That’s doing it wrong. Really. You don’t want to make it a crime to “insult national symbols.”
But Indians have condemned Mr Trivedi’s arrest, calling it a “wrongful act”. Protesters on social networking sites said it was shameful that corrupt politicians were being let off while those who highlighted corruption were being jailed.
“From the information I have gathered, the cartoonist did nothing illegal and, in fact, arresting him was an illegal act,” the chairman of the Press Council of India, Markandey Katju, told The Hindu newspaper.
…
The arrest of Mr Trivedi comes after other recent controversy over cartoons in India.
In April, police arrested a professor in the eastern city of Calcutta for allegedly posting cartoons ridiculing West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the internet. He was later released.
A month later, a row over a cartoon showing Dalit icon BR Ambedkar in a school textbook disrupted the Indian parliament.
Cartoonists have been taking a lot of heat lately. India: do better.
A thing to note in the BBC article – the issue over the Ambedkar cartoon isn’t really an example of the state suppressing a cartoonist’s voice. But rather it is something else – it is the state listening to voices which usually don’t get much play in the mainstream discourse.
This is a sad development, more serious than people may realize. The government has already started censoring Facebook and Twitter posts (in the news a few weeks ago). Civil liberties and freedom of expression are in the danger of being severely curtailed, and people – beset with many other problems, and least expecting it – wouldn’t even notice until the sky falls on their heads. I wonder where it will stop.
Treason is working to overthrow the state. Being rude to politicians is not treason.
A nation that shields the politically powerful from satire is no longer a democracy. India will have to call itself an oligarchy from now on, suppress an increasing tide of seditionist cartoonery, and put up with the international scorn.
A little bit of hope
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-09-14/news/33844355_1_sedition-charges-sedition-law-arrest
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