Satire silenced: Indian artists face censorship as anti-Modi protests grow

New Delhi accused of silencing dissent as satirical content and online critiques are removed under new rules.

Stand-up comic Brijesh Jha [File: Al Jazeera]

New Delhi, India – Stand-up comic Brijesh Jha posted a parody video on Instagram last week to protest the removal of his name, along with his father’s and sister’s, from a voter list in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

The video, which alleged that India’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had disenfranchised millions of voters at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), garnered 1.7 million views after it was posted on September 29.

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Two days later, Meta, the United States-based company that owns Instagram, took the video down, citing “local laws” without giving further explanation.

“I felt very helpless that day. I have only one thing in this country – that I can vote. If you take that away from me, then I have nothing left. So I didn’t know what to do. As an artist, I can just make art, or I can protest,” the Mumbai-based artist told Al Jazeera.

Jha said his parody song was removed because the Modi government is “scared” after an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper last month revealed that two of the election commission’s three members had raised serious concerns over a controversial revision of voter rolls being conducted by the poll panel across the country.

The exercise, known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), was launched in June last year to identify deceased, duplicate or dubious voters and remove them from the rolls. So far, the process has deleted more than 130 million voters – nearly 14 percent of India’s total voters, an overwhelming number of them Muslims who do not usually vote for Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.

The Indian Express investigation found that two of Kumar’s fellow election commissioners had formally objected at least 14 times to key decisions linked to the SIR exercise taken by their chief.

Opposition politicians and critics accused Kumar, a Modi government appointee, of acting at the behest of the BJP and demanded an independent inquiry into the decisions taken by the election commission during his tenure.

The revelations have led to street protests across India, demanding Kumar’s resignation.

On Tuesday, police in the capital New Delhi briefly detained the main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, and other leaders of his Congress party as they tried to march to the election commission office.

“The country has been hijacked by Narendra Modi through vote theft,” Gandhi told reporters. “What has been done to our country is called treason. Nobody is going to escape.”

In response, the BJP accused the opposition parties of “making a concerted effort to change the government”.

“They are deliberately attacking India’s democracy and constitutional institutions,” a BJP spokesman told reporters on Tuesday.

The Congress protesters and their political allies were back on the streets on Wednesday. Their demonstrations followed a series of protests by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and a group of left-wing students in Mumbai and New Delhi since October 2. The CJP has planned another demonstration in New Delhi on October 10 if Kumar does not resign by then.

‘Question the people in power’

What stood out in these protests was an increasingly inventive language of dissent, driven by humour, art and music, with much of it existing online alongside the demonstrations on the streets.

But a crackdown on such memes and jokes has also been simultaneous.

According to the Indian Express newspaper, the government issued nearly 195,000 content-blocking orders to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July this year – an average of one blocking order every 68 seconds.

Rejecting the newspaper report, the government said in a statement, “With 600 million users in India posting up to 78,703 items every 68 seconds, it is reasonable to expect that on average, one of these items may not be lawful.”

The crackdown came after the Modi government tightened rules governing online content in February. According to the new rules, social media platforms must remove content that a government authority or court has declared “unlawful” within three hours of receiving the order, down from 36 hours previously.

Among those whose works were taken down was political cartoonist Satish Acharya.

One of Satish Acharya’s cartoons taken down by the social media companies [File: Al Jazeera]

Several of Acharya’s cartoons, some up to three years old, were removed and his Instagram account was blocked in India from September 28 until late on October 5, he told Al Jazeera.

“At different phases of history, people used cartoons as a tool to express their protest and question the people in power. With the advanced use of social media, cartoons appear in different forms now, sometimes memes and reels,” the 55-year-old said.

“I have a lot of hope in Gen Z. They are fearless, they are creative and they care for the country. Our politicians can learn a lot from them.”

Stand-up comic Jha, who attended the CJP’s protest in Mumbai, agrees. “The more cruel the power is, the softer, more humorous and more artistic the protest becomes,” he told Al Jazeera.

But Jha has refused to apply for a reinstatement of his name in the voters’ list.

“I think they will see this interview and probably I will be in some detention centre. I just want to see what will happen. I’ll not register my name again,” he said.

However, he had a satirical message for Modi as he urged the Indian leader to stop the crackdown on online content.

“Please give back my right to vote. You are a great leader with a 56-inch chest. You shouldn’t be scared of one video,” he said, invoking a long-held right-wing boast about Modi’s famous bust.

新德里被指责压制异议，因为根据新规，讽刺内容和网络批评被删除。

单口喜剧演员 Brijesh Jha [资料来源：半岛电视台]

印度新德里——上周，脱口秀喜剧演员布里杰什·贾在 Instagram 上发布了一段模仿视频，抗议印度东部西孟加拉邦将他的名字、他父亲的名字和他姐姐的名字从选民名单中删除。

该视频声称，印度首席选举专员贾内什·库马尔在总理纳伦德拉·莫迪领导的印度人民党（BJP）的授意下剥夺了数百万选民的选举权。该视频于 9 月 29 日发布后，获得了 170 万次观看。

印度反对党领袖拉胡尔·甘地因选举抗议活动被拘留（共4条记录，此为第1条）

列表 2/4 “蟑螂搅碎了莫迪精心打造的形象”：阿伦达蒂·罗伊

（共4条）第3条：要求选举委员会主席辞职的大规模抗议活动连续第三天震动印度

列表 4/4：印度的“百万叛乱”正在打破莫迪的不可战胜的光环

两天后，Instagram 的母公司 Meta（一家总部位于美国的软件公司）删除了该视频，理由是“当地法律”，但没有给出进一步的解释。

“那天我感到非常无助。在这个国家，我唯一拥有的东西就是投票权。如果剥夺了我的这项权利，我就一无所有了。所以我不知道该怎么办。作为一名艺术家，我可以创作艺术，也可以进行抗议，”这位居住在孟买的艺术家告诉半岛电视台。

贾哈表示，他的恶搞歌曲被删除是因为莫迪政府“害怕”了。此前，《印度快报》上个月的一项调查显示，选举委员会的三名成员中有两名对该委员会在全国范围内进行的有争议的选民名册修订工作表示严重关切。

这项名为“特别强化选民名册审查”（SIR）的行动于去年6月启动，旨在识别已故选民、重复登记选民或可疑选民，并将他们从选民名册中移除。迄今为止，该行动已删除超过1.3亿选民——约占印度选民总数的14%，其中绝大多数是穆斯林，他们通常不会投票给莫迪领导的印度教民族主义政党。

《印度快报》的调查发现，库马尔的两名同事选举委员至少 14 次正式反对其主席做出的与 SIR 工作相关的关键决定。

反对派政客和批评人士指责莫迪政府任命的库马尔是受印度人民党指使行事，并要求对选举委员会在其任期内做出的决定进行独立调查。

这些爆料引发了印度各地的街头抗议，要求库马尔辞职。

周二，首都新德里警方短暂拘留了主要反对党领袖拉胡尔·甘地及其国大党的其他领导人，当时他们正试图游行前往选举委员会办公室。

“纳伦德拉·莫迪通过窃取选票劫持了国家，”甘地告诉记者。“他对我们国家所做的一切叫做叛国。没有人能逃脱惩罚。”

对此，印度人民党指责反对党“蓄意改变政府”。

“他们正在蓄意攻击印度的民主和宪政制度，”印度人民党发言人周二告诉记者。

周三，国大党抗议者及其政治盟友再次走上街头。此前，自10月2日起，讽刺意味十足的“蟑螂人民党”（CJP）和一群左翼学生在孟买和新德里举行了一系列抗议活动。如果库马尔届时仍不辞职，“蟑螂人民党”计划于10月10日在新德里再次举行示威活动。

“质疑当权者”

这些抗议活动中最引人注目的是越来越富有创意的异议语言，这种语言以幽默、艺术和音乐为驱动，其中很多内容与街头示威活动同时存在于网络上。

但与此同时，针对这类表情包和笑话的打击也随之展开。

据《印度快报》报道，今年 3 月至 7 月期间，印度政府向 Instagram、Facebook 和 YouTube 发布了近 195,000 份内容屏蔽令——平均每 68 秒就发布一份屏蔽令。

政府在一份声明中驳斥了该报的报道，称：“印度有 6 亿用户，每 68 秒发布多达 78,703 件商品，因此可以合理预期，平均而言，这些商品中可能有一件是不合法的。”

此次打击行动是在莫迪政府2月份收紧网络内容监管规定之后展开的。根据新规，社交媒体平台必须在收到政府机构或法院的命令后三小时内删除被认定为“非法”的内容，而此前的期限为36小时。

作品被撤下的作品中包括政治漫画家萨蒂什·阿查里亚。

萨蒂什·阿查里亚的一幅漫画被社交媒体公司删除 [图片来源：半岛电视台]

阿查里亚告诉半岛电视台，他的几幅漫画作品（其中一些创作于三年前）被删除，他的 Instagram 账号从 9 月 28 日到 10 月 5 日晚些时候在印度被封禁。

“在历史的不同阶段，人们都曾利用漫画作为表达抗议和质疑当权者的工具。随着社交媒体的普及，漫画现在以不同的形式出现，有时还会以表情包和短视频的形式出现，”这位55岁的老人说道。

“我对Z世代寄予厚望。他们无所畏惧，富有创造力，并且关心国家。我们的政治家可以从他们身上学到很多东西。”

曾参加孟买CJP抗议活动的单口喜剧演员贾哈对此表示赞同。他告诉半岛电视台：“权力越残酷，抗议活动就越温和、越幽默、越有艺术性。”

但贾哈拒绝申请恢复其在选民名单上的名字。

“我觉得他们会看到这段采访，我可能就会被关进拘留中心。我只是想看看会发生什么。我不会再登记我的名字了。”他说。

然而，他向莫迪传递了一个讽刺性的信息，敦促这位印度领导人停止对网络内容的打压。

“请还我投票权。您是一位伟大的领袖，胸膛宽阔，足有56英寸。您不应该害怕一段视频，”他说道，并援引了右翼长期以来对莫迪著名胸膛的吹嘘。