Admit it. All of us love poking fun at politicians and their antics. But who would have known that forwarding an innocuous joke could land one in the police lockup? Calcutta-based professor Ambikesh Mahapatra found that out to his dismay last week. The professor, who forwarded a rather tastefully done cartoon of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee (which drew inspiration from Oscar-winner Satyajit Ray’s film) to his friends and shared it on his Facebook page, spent a night in police custody after being heckled by goons from the ruling party.
If this the end of free speech online? One would think so if one goes by the government’s actions....
First, we had the government hauling up social networking sites for objectionable content. While the Union Minister for Telecom and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, hastily clarified that it wasn’t an attempt to regulate the web, a self-proclaimed intellectual filed a case against a host of IT companies for content on social networks that “hurt” sentiments…………….
India has had a rich tradition of political humour. But if some politicians are so sensitive as to take offence at every sarcastic comment about them, the world’s largest democracy has had it……
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