When stick figure cartoons are perceived as a threat – DW – 11/10/2024

“It started as a side thing to make my friends laugh.”

It was in 2014 that Rachita Taneja posted her first comic strip on Facebook. At the time, she was already working for a nonprofit organization and the human rights activist was also “chronically online,” which meant she had “a hard time escaping the news ” she told DW at the Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin.where the Indian designer was invited to present “Drawing a Line”, a documentary retracing her work.

When he started, Narendra Modi had just been elected Prime Minister of India. She felt she had to respond directly to her government’s attempts to restrict freedom of expression.

Using simple stick figures, she continued to draw her comics, commenting on all sorts of social, political and cultural topics, from #MeToo and patriarchy to free speech and harassment against minorities.

The cartoons are all collected in her web series, titled Sanitary Panels – a play on words combining “sanitary napkins” and “comic book panels”, reflecting her feminist orientation.

Ten years later, Sanitary Panels has more than 133,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 50,000 on X. She has gained international recognition and received the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award 2024.

But aside from his many fans, the Indian political cartoonist also faces extreme hatred online, including rape and death threats.

Her drawings could even land her in jail, as a case has been filed against her in the Supreme Court. Accused of “contempt of court” at the end of 2020 for drawings criticizing the institution, she is still awaiting the outcome of the trial today, four years later.

She first became aware of the case after someone tagged her on social media: “I found out on Twitter that there was a complaint against me and I immediately had a fit panic,” she said.

Although she received a lot of support from her cartooning community, the fact that one of India’s most important institutions could feel threatened by her project also seemed surreal: “How could the highest court in the largest democracy of the world talking about my stick figures? ? ” she asks in the documentary.

Freedom of expression in India under threat

“Indian media have fallen into an ‘unofficial state of emergency’ since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014,” notes Reporters Without Borders, which ranks India 159th out of 180 countries in its Freedom Index. of the press 2024.

The non-governmental organization also highlights the close ties between Modi and the families that own the country’s main media outlets. As a result, notes Reporters Without Borders, the mainstream media serve as government spokespersons. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is criticized for defending part of the agenda of Hindu extremists, who sow terror against Muslims in a climate of impunity.

Indian Muslims live in fear of Hindu nationalist violence

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Coordinated campaigns calling for revenge against government critics are organized by the Hindu far right: “Journalists critical of the government are regularly victims of harassment, intimidation, threats and physical attacks online, as well as criminal prosecutions and arbitrary arrests,” the newspaper added. latest report from Reporters Without Borders.

Turn to the Internet

At the same time, the Internet offers alternatives to many people in the country: “Online information, particularly on social networks, is favored by a younger population and has overtaken the written press as the main source of information,” observes Reporters without borders.

Feeling threatened by the free flow of information, the Indian government attempted to censor critical content.

A 2023 BBC documentary investigating the role of the Narendra Modi government in spreading hatred against Indian Muslims has been blocked in the country. Authorities banned the sharing of excerpts from the documentary and asked Twitter and YouTube to remove links and videos.

But such attempts at censorship often backfire, as they put content in the spotlight – a phenomenon known as the “Streisand effect”, named after American singer Barbra Streisand, whose lawsuit to have it removed a photo from an obscure website made the image go viral.

Similarly, Rachita Taneja points out that the number of subscribers to the webcomic Sanitary Panels skyrocketed immediately after the Supreme Court case was announced.

Hoping to better control online content, Modi’s government drafted the Broadcasting Bill 2024. It would have defined all social media creators as “digital news broadcasters” and given authorities the right to ban any content they deem inappropriate. The bill has been widely criticized as a further threat to freedom of expression.

However, as the BJP failed to secure a majority in the June elections, Prime Minister Modi must now work with coalition partners and has failed to pass the bill, which is currently currently being redesigned.

“Pure and simple” censorship

Yet many political commentators, journalists, artists, activists and comedians – including Kunal Kamra, one of India’s most popular comedians, who also faces a Supreme Court trial – remain on guard.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as self-censorship,” says Rachita Taneja in “Drawing a Line.” “If you face threats of violence, if you face legal threats and if you adapt to that kind of climate, that’s not self-censorship, that’s censorship. Plain and simple .”

Despite threats and censorship, Taneja plans to stay in her home country. “I love India so much,” she says. She considers it unfair to even have to consider moving for safety reasons – immediately adding that she recognizes that she is in a privileged position in Indian society, being born Hindu and upper caste, and that She had access to a good education and world travel. “So I think that privilege also protects me to some extent.”

And beyond giving a voice to those who don’t have as much privilege as her, Sanitary Panels has become an essential part of Rachita Taneja’s life: “I would be more anxious if I didn’t make my comic strip. I think it’s a at this point to be able to process the world around me, I have to create comics so I think it really helps me think and meditate on an issue and try to address it. distilled into a comic strip.

“Drawing a Line” will not be screened in India in order to protect Rachita Taneja and her documentarian, who works under the pseudonym Pana Sama. A final screening at the Berlin Human Rights Film Festival will take place on October 12.

Editing: Brenda Haas