Funny memes or fair criticism do not merit unreasonable action
How much trouble could a meme on social media get you into? In India, a lot. Consider 23-year-old Pradeep in Chennai. He’s spent nearly two weeks in jail for a meme riffing off a famous comedy scene from an old Tamil movie.
The meme was posted shortly after Tamil Nadu’s budget for 2023–24 was presented, and the finance minister announced that the government would be rolling out its scheme to provide women heads of families a monthly honorarium of Rs 1000 later this year. However, the government did not immediately unveil the eligibility criteria for the scheme.
Pradeep’s meme attempted to poke fun at the minister and the CM, portraying them as deciding the beneficiaries on dubious grounds. Was it in good taste? No. Was it worth a midnight arrest, rejection of bail and two weeks in jail? Anyone with good sense would say no.
Pradeep was booked under Sections 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot), 505 (1)(b) (statements conducing public mischief with intent to cause fear or alarm) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to outrage the modesty of a woman) of the IPC. That the consequences are disproportionate to the action would be an understatement. Almost as bad is the political fiction that these disproportionate consequences come as action against disrespect to women.
There is a tendency in TN and elsewhere in the country to criminalise dissent and even fair criticism. People are booked over harmless social media posts from Kolkata to Kanniyakumari, as it were, signalling to the public that we are not as free as we think we are or ought to be.
Political parties already impose a form of censorship on social media by unleashing their IT cells, aka trolls against people expressing unfriendly or critical views. Tamil Nadu political history is replete with instances of people risking their lives to express a radical thought. The current dispensation is no stranger to police action against its leaders in some of the darker moments of the nation’s history.
Yet arresting and imprisoning a person for a critical social media post can only be considered draconian in a democracy, while the denial of bail soon after the Supreme Court again pulled up magistrates on the matter tells us that, regardless of our history, we may well live in a police state where free speech may live or die depending on who is in power and how thick their skin is.