Why in news?
Chennai based cartoonist was arrested for criticising Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and officials.
What is the reason of imprisonment?
- Chennai based cartoonist Bala had uploaded a cartoon to his Facebook page, which the police describe as “obscene”.
- It was posted a day after a labourer doused himself and his family in kerosene and set them on fire in the campus of the collector's office in Tirunelveli.
- The cartoon had stuck to generalities and depicted no specific personality.
- In the cartoon Tirunelveli district collector, the police chief and the chief minister himself, all three barely clothed.
- It is one thing to say the emperor wears no clothes, quite another to show it.
How state government had reacted over cartoons?
- Tamilnadu has produced an array of political cartoonists powered by the freedom struggle and gag cartoonists who held forth on a society challenged by the Dravidian movement.
- The cartoon then and now is far from silly and no-one knows this more than the Tamil politician.
- Whenever the visual image gets even remotely dented, Tamilnadu authorities are quick to react.
- Over the years, however, Tamil cartooning seems to have lost steam.
- It doesn’t have anything like the patronage the cartoon enjoys, say in neighbouring Malayalam media.
What is the response for the cartoon?
- The cartoonist jogs recent memory by bringing the local authorities into focus.
- When the dispute is between individual rights and group interests, officials directly in charge seem to routinely side with the latter.
- The cartoon on the other hand is wordless barring the labelling of the three characters in it, helpfully in English. This powers it further.
- It cuts across languages and given the multiple tweets and FB posts following the arrest, should go places.
- Frustrating for the authorities but reassuring for the cartoon watcher.
- If the courts don’t reverse its default setting, particularly in the case of an everyday art like the cartoon, it will go up and up into the unbridled cyberspace.
Source: Indian Express
