ON February 10, 2025, the 125 year old Tamil Nadu based magazine Vikatan published a cartoon of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a chair with his hands and legs shackled. Beside him sat the United States President Donald Trump, his fingers pointing at the shackles, and a derisive smile donning his face. Very inexplicably, the access to that cartoon as also the Vikatan website was blocked allegedly by the Union government without citing any reason. Several political parties, including the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, condemned the alleged blocking of the website and the cartoon, as constituting a violation of the freedom of press which flows from the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.
Vikatan’s blocking contradicts natural justice principles, violates the law
The Union’s decision to render the website inaccessible without detailing any reasons goes against the very founding principles of natural justice. Its coercive action tramples not only the freedom of expression but also the citizen’s right to be informed of the content, and underlying message of the cartoon. This indicates the government has presumed Vikatan’s guilt, even before any adjudication by a court of law could be undertaken.
Recently, preceding the presentation of the Union Budget in the Parliament, the government published the Economic Survey 2024-2025 report. The report noted that in order to foster trust between the government and entrepreneurs, and enable economic growth and progress, the operating principle of regulations needed to shift from a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ norm, to an ‘innocent until proven guilty’ standing.
Unfortunately in Vikatan’s case, the Union government has taken a contradictory stance, and ignored the liberal principle of criminal justice, and law broadly, that guilt cannot be presumed. That is the only potential explanation of the Union’s blocking of the website without any prior notice or official explanation.
On February 13, 2025, while deflecting a question posed by an American reporter at the White House, on billionaire Gautam Adani’s U.S. indictment, Prime Minister Modi eloquently spoke of India’s rich democratic status. The blocking of Vikatan’s access in the same time period shows that the Prime Minister’s response was merely rhetorical. It is nothing short of a targeted attack on critical journalism.
State power used for partisan purposes
It is all the more chilling to note that the website became inaccessible soon after the Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’) took offence of the cartoon and wrote against it. On February 15, 2025, BJP’s state president K. Annamalai stated that his unit had submitted representations to the Press Council and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to take “prompt action against Vikatan magazine for being a mouthpiece of the DMK and for publishing offensive and baseless content.” It is no wonder that a cartoon caricaturing Prime Minister Modi has been found to be unacceptable by his regime and party. But does this not make it unmistakably clear that the State’s decision to digitally invisibilise the cartoon and the website was blatantly triggered by partisan considerations?
Such assaults on freedom of press testify to the regime’s intolerance towards journalism that holds mirror to the face of power. All of this sufficiently justifies the steady decline of India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index since 2019. Today, it is ranked 159 out of 180 countries.
A recall of colonial gag orders
105 years ago, in 1920, the ‘Congress Report on the Punjab Disorders’, authored by Mahatma Gandhi was published. The report came shortly after the brutal Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, Punjab. On April 13, 1919, between 400 and 1500 people protesting the Rowlatt Act were shot to death on the command of brigadier R.E.H. Dyer. In the aftermath of the killings, Gandhi noted that there had been a systematic suppression of public opinion through the gagging of local press. Journalists from outside were blocked from covering what was happening in Punjab. Gandhi wrote, “The existence of independent journalism became an impossibility during the Martial Law regime.”
In 2025, there is neither declaration of an Emergency in India nor a Martial Law. And yet the ruling regime, under Prime Minister Modi, contrary to its claim that India is the ‘mother of democracy’ consistently stifles press freedom by taking numerous measures against independent journalism and journalists. The instant case of preventing access to the Vikatan website showing Modi in chains falls in its larger pattern of stifling dissent.
Nehru’s views on cartoons
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously asked celebrated cartoonist Shankar Pillai not to spare him while caricaturing leaders and public figures in his sketches.
In February 1937, while appreciating Pillai’s cartoons, Nehru wrote, “Shankar has that rare gift, rarer in India than elsewhere, and without the least bit of malice or ill-will, he points out, with an artist’s skill, the weaknesses and foibles of those who display themselves on the public stage. It is good to have the veil of our conceit torn occasionally.”
Some pertinent questions ought to be posed. Was Prime Minister Modi’s cartoon and Vikatan blocked because it truly tore away the veil of conceit the government has donned? Indeed the action of making the cartoon and website invisible is quite telling of the political insecurity that plagues leaders in the current regime, who unlike Nehru, are neither appreciative nor immune to their “weaknesses and foibles” being critiqued through art.
But in the words of Nehru “It is good to have the veil of our conceit torn occasionally.” The blocked cartoon served its purpose of highlighting the plight of Indians who were deported from the U.S. by the Trump administration, in shackles and robbed of dignity. It also represented the Indian government’s silence on the manner the deportations were done. The cartoon served the purpose of tearing the conceit of the Indian government and the Vikatan group should be rightfully congratulated for displaying rare courage. Surely, others must replicate that example if the spirit of critical journalism, foundation to public reasoning and democracy, is to be preserved.
Note: Section 9 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 confers power upon the Union government to block public access to any information. Such a power can be exercised if it is “necessary” or “expedient” and “justifiable”. The content can be blocked on the grounds mentioned in Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which are , in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above. However, the Union government has neither released any public notice, nor communicated anything to Vikatan pertaining to why, and under what law the website was taken down.
