If lampooning was a threat to national security, defence, reputation and India’s foreign relations, the first Prime Minister of the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru would have desisted from telling cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai — “Don’t spare me, Shankar”.
Recently, access to a 52-second cartoon video reportedly featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi was blocked from the social media handles of The Wire, an online news portal. The portal reported that one of its editors was “informed orally…. that the grounds for blocking the cartoon were that it spread rumours/unverified information that would affect the defence, security, reputation of the country and India’s relations with foreign countries”.
The Editors Guild of India issued a statement that the incident was yet “another example of the rising intolerance to comment and scrutiny on the part of the government and its representatives… and serves to tarnish India’s credentials as an accommodative democracy that gives space to media, including satire and humour”.
Legal precedents
The Guild drew attention to the government’s “unsheathing” of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules of 2026, which is poised to come into effect from February 20, the day the Global AI Impact Summit ends in New Delhi. The amended rules give social media platforms three hours, a sharp reduction from the 24-36 hours under the 2021 Rules, to take down content, including synthetically-generated ones, deemed illegal by a court or an “appropriate government”.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka High Court has recently upheld the ‘Sahyog’ content-blocking portal, a government platform to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries in order to facilitate the removal or disabling of access to any information, data or communication link being used to commit an unlawful act.
The High Court had rejected a petition by X (formerly Twitter) that the portal bypassed procedural safeguards which need to be mandatorily followed by government authorities before blocking public access to online content under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The social media platform had argued that the government was using the “safe harbour” regime to nudge social media intermediaries into blocking content and restricting free speech and expression.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court, in its March 2015 judgment in Shreya Singhal versus Union of India, held that not only the social media intermediary but also the ‘originator’ of the online content must be heard before a blocking is passed by the government.
The Shreya Singhal verdict had held that any blocking of content under Section 69A could be done by the Union government only for reasons prescribed in Article 19(2) of the Constitution, such as threatening the security or defence of the country, friendly relations with foreign nations, and in order to maintain public order or prevention of incitement.
The reasons for the blocking order have to be given in writing and it can be subject to review by a committee.
Defining satire
However, the question is whether satire, comedy or a work of art is a threat to national security or defence of the nation. The Supreme Court has consistently held that satire was basically an exaggeration of a particular situation or event beyond normal bounds that it becomes ridiculous, inducing laughter, and in the process exposes certain ills or shortcomings.
The Supreme Court in Indibily Creative (P) Ltd. versus State of West Bengal, a 2019judgment, quoted senior advocate Madhavi Goradia Divan that “satire is a literary genre where topical issues are held up to scorn by means of ridicule or irony”’. The top court went on to note that satire was one of the most effective art forms revealing the absurdities, hypocrisies and contradictions of life. The judgment highlighted satire’s “unique ability to quickly and clearly make a point and facilitate understanding in ways that other forms of communication and expression often do not”.
Justice K. Ramaswamy, speaking for the Supreme Court Bench in the 1997 caselaw of D.C. Saxena versus Chief Justice of India cautioned the government that “prohibition of freedom of speech and expression on public issues prevents and stifles the debate on social, political and economic questions which in the long term endangers the stability of the community and maximises the source and breeds for more likely revolution”. The Supreme Court, in the Indibly Creative caselaw, had even quoted Albert Camus to defend the freedom of artistic expression through satire and comedy, noting that “art, by virtue of that free essence I have tried to define, unites whereas tyranny separates. It is not surprising, therefore, that art should be the enemy marked out by every form of oppression”.
In Kama versus M. Jothisorupan, a 2018 judgment of the Madras High Court, the single judge Bench termed a cartoon as a close relation of caricature, implying a deliberate exaggeration intended to produce satirical effect. The Bench termed a satirical cartoon as “intrinsically a weapon of ridicule”. The judgment explained that the appeal of the political cartoon or caricature was often based on exploitation of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events — an exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the portrayal. The High Court said the political cartoon was a “weapon of attack”, a bee sting of scorn, ridicule and satire. Something which would be least effective if it tried to “pat some politician on the back”.
The right to poke fun
Globally, courts in democracies have entitled cartoons and satire with greater latitude, tolerating them as an essential ingredient of public life and opinion.
The Madras High Court referred to how there was an “early cartoon portraying George Washington, the father of USA, as an ass”.
The Supreme Court has, time and again, underscored that the art of satire and cartoons have to be evaluated through the eyes of a reasonable person who could laugh it off, unlike a “touchy and hyper-sensitive individual”.
The Delhi High Court, while dismissing a plea for injunction against Netflix for streaming online content derogatory to lawyers, had championed the liberty of a creative artist to “project the picture of the society in a manner he perceives”. It termed satire as one of the prime forms of exposing the ills of the society. It underscored the value of stand-up comedians in society as they use satire and exaggerate the ills to an extent that it becomes ridiculous.
The top court, in a March 2025 verdict, said “75 years into our Republic, we cannot be seen to be so shaky on our fundamentals that a mere recital of a poem, or for that matter, any form of art or entertainment, such as, stand-up comedy, can be alleged to lead to animosity or hatred amongst different communities”. The observation was part of a judgment which found Congress MP Imran Pratapgarhi innocent of spreading communal hate and communal discord through his poem on “suffering injustice with love”.
The same month saw the Supreme Court issue notice to the Union government on a petition filed by Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) challenging provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009. The petition has argued that Rules 8 and 9 make it optional for the government to inform the original creator of the online content about the proposed blocking action. The petition, argued by senior advocate Indira Jaising, said the government could use Rule 9 as an “emergency” provision to block content with hardly a word to the creator of the information. It contended that Rule 16 facilitated a blanket confidentiality regarding requests, complaints and actions taken for blocking information.
A similar petition filed by actor Sushant Singh challenging the 2009 Rules has been tagged with the SFLC petition. The Supreme Court has also issued notice in a third petition filed by senior journalist Sanjay Sharma, editor of the digital news platform ‘4PM’, against the blocking of his YouTube channel by the government on grounds of national security and public order.
