Restrictions on art 

Why in news?

Chennai based cartoonist was arrested for criticising Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and officials.

What is the reason of imprisonment?

• Chennai based cartoonist Bala had uploaded a cartoon to his Facebook page, which the police describe as “obscene”.
• It was posted a day after a labourer doused himself and his family in kerosene and set them on fire in the campus of the collector's office in Tirunelveli.
• The cartoon had stuck to generalities and depicted no specific personality.
• In the cartoon Tirunelveli district collector, the police chief and the chief minister himself, all three barely clothed.
• It is one thing to say the emperor wears no clothes, quite another to show it.

How state government had reacted over cartoons?

• Tamilnadu has produced an array of political cartoonists powered by the freedom struggle and gag cartoonists who held forth on a society challenged by the Dravidian movement.
• The cartoon then and now is far from silly and no-one knows this more than the Tamil politician.
• Whenever the visual image gets even remotely dented, Tamilnadu authorities are quick to react.
• Over the years, however, Tamil cartooning seems to have lost steam.
• It doesn’t have anything like the patronage the cartoon enjoys, say in neighbouring Malayalam media.

What is the response for the cartoon?

• The cartoonist jogs recent memory by bringing the local authorities into focus.
• When the dispute is between individual rights and group interests, officials directly in charge seem to routinely side with the latter.
• The cartoon on the other hand is wordless barring the labelling of the three characters in it, helpfully in English. This powers it further.
• It cuts across languages and given the multiple tweets and FB posts following the arrest, should go places.
• Frustrating for the authorities but reassuring for the cartoon watcher.
• If the courts don’t reverse its default setting, particularly in the case of an everyday art like the cartoon, it will go up and up into the unbridled cyberspace.

Source: Indian Express