On the importance of satire

Explore the critical role of satire in society and its protection under law amidst rising censorship and national security debates.

If lampooning was a threat to national security, defence, reputation and India’s foreign relations, the first Prime Minister of the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru would have desisted from telling cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai — “Don’t spare me, Shankar”.

Recently, access to a 52-second cartoon video reportedly featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi was blocked from the social media handles of The Wire, an online news portal. The portal reported that one of its editors was “informed orally.... that the grounds for blocking the cartoon were that it spread rumours/unverified information that would affect the defence, security, reputation of the country and India’s relations with foreign countries”.

The Editors Guild of India issued a statement that the incident was yet “another example of the rising intolerance to comment and scrutiny on the part of the government and its representatives… and serves to tarnish India’s credentials as an accommodative democracy that gives space to media, including satire and humour”.

The Guild drew attention to the government’s “unsheathing” of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules of 2026, which is poised to come into effect from February 20, the day the Global AI Impact Summit ends in New Delhi. The amended rules give social media platforms three hours, a sharp reduction from the 24-36 hours under the 2021 Rules, to take down content, including synthetically-generated ones, deemed illegal by a court or an “appropriate government”.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka High Court has recently upheld the ‘Sahyog’ content-blocking portal, a government platform to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries in order to facilitate the removal or disabling of access to any information, data or communication link being used to commit an unlawful act.

The High Court had rejected a petition by X (formerly Twitter) that the portal bypassed procedural safeguards which need to be mandatorily followed by government authorities before blocking public access to online content under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The social media platform had argued that the government was using the “safe harbour” regime to nudge social media intermediaries into blocking content and restricting free speech and expression.