On July 3, Justice Subodh Abhyankar of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, while rejecting the anticipatory bail application of Indore-based political cartoonist Hemant Malviya, instead ordered that he be arrested by the police.

His supposed crime? Drawing a cartoon about Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which, Abhyankar claimed, “overstep[ed] the threshold of freedom of speech and expression”.

Malviya had been booked by the Indore police in May for the cartoon he had published on his Facebook page – which he has since deleted.

What are ramifications of this order for India’s political cartoonists?

Malviya had published his original cartoon on January 6, 2021, depicting Modi as a doctor administering an injection to a man dressed in what may appear to some as the uniform of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.

This is accompanied with the Hindi caption “Abe kayko ghabra riya hai? Serum ke Poonawala ne bataya to vaccine me to paani hi hai, ab paani ke side effect se tu koi marega thode hi!” (Why are you worried? Serum’s Poonawala has said that the vaccine only has water, you won’t die from the side effect of water!)

This was a reference to Serum Institute of India’s chief executive Adar Poonawalla alleging that many Covid vaccines in the market were only...

Read more