In 1940, when the British Empire still governed India with a mixture of hauteur and anxiety, the Viceroy, Victor Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, summoned a cartoonist to Government House. The cartoonist was K Shankar Pillai—Shankar to a nation that would later grow up laughing at his lines in the Shankar’s Weekly. All the great Indian cartoonists—Rajinder Puri, OV VIjayan, Kutty et al—cut their teeth there. Now, Shankar had lampooned the Viceroy in a cartoon. Linlithgow’s was not a calendar invite. It was an imperial command. Shankar went, by most accounts, with trepidation. In British India where sedition laws were not theoretical and press freedoms were conditional, such an invitation could have meant censure, or worse. Instead, Linlithgow rose, shook Shankar’s hand, asked him to sit, gave him tea and cake and requested the original of the cartoon to frame and hang in his office.
Today six young men at the Police Training School, Rewa, shot a reel in uniform. They grinned into the camera and mouthed a swaggering line: so what if I don’t look good? At least I have a government job. So what if I don’t have money? I get a monthly salary. So what if I don’t have clothes? At least I have a uniform. For this minor outbreak of joie de vivre, they earned disciplinary action.
Welcome to the Republic of Permanent Offence.
These trainees were not mocking the State. They were not parodying the police. They were, if anything, celebrating the very idea of government service. Their boast was aspiration wrapped in self-deprecating humour. But in India, authority has no sense of irony about itself. Ironically, police departments themselves run chirpy social media accounts, posting memes about traffic fines and helmet rules, hoping to appear relatable. Humour is acceptable when it is institutional and curated. It becomes subversive when it is spontaneous and bottom-up.
Somewhere between colonial hangover and postcolonial insecurity, we built an establishment that believes dignity is preserved by suppressing laughter. The uniform must not smile. The state must not be seen to enjoy itself. The State reacts to jest with procedure.
Linlithgow was no liberal democrat. He presided over India during the World War II, declared India at war without consulting Indian leaders, and operated within an imperial framework fundamentally resistant to self-rule. Yet he understood something elemental about power: ridicule does not diminish authority but panic does.
Satire has always been democracy’s pressure valve. In ancient Athens, playwrights like Aristophanes skewered leaders on stage. In Britain, cartoonists in Punch caricatured monarchs and prime ministers. In India, Shankar drew Jawaharlal Nehru with affectionate irreverence; Nehru once uttered the unforgettable line, “Don’t spare me, Shankar!”
What has changed? Indian society has always been wary of unapproved revelry. Weddings may be loud. Festivals may be riotous. But everyday joy, especially in official spaces, is treated with suspicion. There is a lingering belief that seriousness equals sincerity. It doesn’t. Discipline is not the extinction of delight. A uniform is not a vow of monastic silence. If anything, a police force that can laugh at itself is more secure, not less. Confidence allows levity. Insecurity demands suppression.
The irony is almost theatrical. A colonial Viceroy could hang his own caricature in his study. A democratic administration struggles with a reel. The internet, of course, complicates everything. Satire now travels at algorithmic speed. A joke can metastasise into a movement. Authorities fear virality because it is uncontrollable. Yet the answer to uncontrollability cannot be perpetual FIRs and internal inquiries.
Linlithgow’s request to Shankar was an acknowledgment that public life invites scrutiny, exaggeration, distortion, and that surviving it is part of the job. If we truly wish to transcend colonial hangovers, we might begin there. The day power can laugh at itself is the day it proves it does not rule by fear. I’ve been a political cartoonist. I’ve roasted Indira Gandhi when she ruled with ruthlessness, yet she nominated the cartoonist Abu Abraham to the Rajya Sabha. Recently an FIR was filed against a cartoonist for “insulting the prime ministers.” I’ve drawn the ever-polite Manmohan Singh into gentle absurdity and exaggerated the soft-spoken charm of Rajiv Gandhi. A political cartoon isn’t hate. It’s democracy doing cardio, reminding leaders they’re human, not holograms.
So today a cartoon becomes “disrespect” and suddenly, humour feels like high treason; which is ironic considering a colonial ruler in 1940 had thicker skin than some modern officials with verified handles and PR teams. Gen Alpha lives online. Everything gets memed. Everything gets remixed. Power isn’t protected by seriousness anymore.
If authority glitches because of a drawing, that’s not strength; that’s low battery. If it punishes the joi de vivre of young men uniform, it is small minds sitting in big rooms. Fun or satire is not rebellion, it’s social feedback. When leaders can laugh at themselves, it signals confidence. So yes, after lampooning the iron-fisted and the well-mannered, I still wait for someone in high office to look at a cartoon and say: “Don’t spare me, Ravi—Shankar.” That’s not disrespect. That’s democratic rizz.