India: When stick figure cartoons are seen as a threat

"It started as a thing on the side to make my friends laugh."

It was in 2014 that Rachita Taneja uploaded her first comic on Facebook. Already working for a non-profit organization at the time, the human rights campaigner was also "chronically online," which meant she found it "hard to escape the news," she told DW at the Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin, where the Indian cartoonist was invited to present "Drawing a Line," a documentary portraying her work.

Back when she started, Narendra Modi had been newly elected as prime minister of India. She felt she had to directly react to his government's attempts to curb freedom of speech.

Using simple stick figures, she kept drawing her comics, commenting on all sorts of social, political and cultural topics, from #MeToo and patriarchy to freedom of speech and harassment against minorities.

The cartoons are all collected in her web series, called Sanitary Panels — a pun combining "sanitary pads" and "comic panels," reflecting her feminist focus.

Ten years later, Sanitary Panels has more than 133,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 50,000 on X. She has gained international recognition, and was honored with the 2024 Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award.

But along with the numerous fans, the Indian political cartoonist also faces extreme online hate, including rape and death threats.

Her doodles could even land her in prison, as a Supreme Court case has been issued against her. Charged with "contempt of court" at the end of 2020 for drawings criticizing the institution, she is still waiting for the outcome of the court case today, four years later.  

She first became aware of the case after someone tagged her on social media: "I found out on Twitter that there was a case against me, and I immediately had a panic attack," she said.

While she received a lot of support from her community of cartoonists, the fact that one of India's most important institutions could feel threatened by her project also seemed surreal: "How is the highest court in the largest democracy in the world talking about my stick figures?" she asks in the documentary.

India's freedom of expression under threat

"India's media has fallen into an 'unofficial state of emergency' since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014," notes Reporters Without Borders, which ranks India at 159 out of 180 countries in its 2024 Press Freedom Index.

The non-governmental organization also highlights the close ties between Modi and the families owning the country's main media outlets. As a result, Reporters Without Borders notes, mainstream media serves as the mouthpiece of the government. Modi's party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is criticized for pushing part of the agenda of Hindu extremists, who are sowing terror against Muslims in a climate of impunity.

Coordinated campaigns calling for revenge against government critics are organized by the Hindu far right: "Journalists who are critical of the government are routinely subjected to online harassment, intimidation, threats and physical attacks, as well as criminal prosecutions and arbitrary arrests," adds the latest Reporters Without Borders report.

Turning to the internet

Meanwhile, the internet provides alternatives for many people in the country: "Online news, particularly on social media, is favored by a younger population and has overtaken print media as the main source of news," observes Reporters Without Borders.

Feeling threatened by the free circulation of information, the Indian government has attempted to censor critical content.

A 2023 BBC documentary investigating Narendra Modi's government's role in spreading hate against India's Muslims was blocked in the country. Authorities banned the sharing of clips of the documentary, and asked Twitter and YouTube to take down links and videos.

But such censorship attempts often backfire, as they put the content into the spotlight — a phenomenon known as the "Streisand effect," named after US singer Barbra Streisand, whose lawsuit to have a photo removed from an obscure website made the picture viral.

Similarly, Rachita Taneja points out that the number of followers of the Sanitary Panels webcomic skyrocketed right after the Supreme Court case was announced.

Hoping to better control online content, Modi's government drafted the Broadcasting Bill 2024. It would have defined all social media creators as "digital news broadcasters" and have given authorities the right to ban any content they judged inappropriate. The draft bill was widely criticized as a further threat to freedom of speech.

However, since the BJP failed to secure a majority at the elections in June, Prime Minister Modi now has to work with coalition partners and did not manage to pass the draft bill, which is now being reworked.

'Plain and simple' censorship

Still, many political commentators, journalists, artists, activists and comedians — including Kunal Kamra, one of India's most popular standup comedians, who also faces a Supreme Court lawsuit — remain on their toes.

"I don't think there's such a thing as self-censorship," says Rachita Taneja in "Drawing a Line." "If you are facing threats of violence, if you are facing legal threats, and if you adapt in that kind of a climate, it's not self-censorship, it's censorship. Plain and simple."

Despite the threats and censorship, Taneja plans to stay in her home country. "I love India too much," she says. 

She sees it as unfair to even have to think about moving for safety reasons — immediately adding that she recognizes being in a position of privilege in Indian society, through the fact that she was born Hindu and upper caste, and having had access to a good education and world travel. "So I think that privilege also protects me to a certain extent."

And beyond giving a voice to those who don't have as much privilege as she does, Sanitary Panels has become an essential part of Rachita Taneja's life: "I would be more anxious if I didn't make my comic. I think it's a compulsion at this point. In order for me to process the world around me, I need to make comics. So I think it actually helps me think about and meditate on an issue and try to distill it into a comic."

"Drawing a Line" will not be shown in India in order to protect Rachita Taneja and her documentary filmmaker, who works under the pen name Pana Sama. A final screening at the Berlin Human Rights Film Festival will take place on October 12.
 

Edited by: Brenda Haas