Indian cartoonist remains in custody

A 25-year-old cartoonist is in the eye of a storm of protest from civil society in Mumbai. Accused by a local lawyer of drawing cartoons that made fun of the Constitution and mocked the Indian national emblem, the Ashoka Pillar, which appears on all official documents, the police in this city slapped a charge of sedition against Aseem Trivedi.

The cartoons in question appeared at an anti-corruption rally held a year ago and were later uploaded onto Trivedi’s website. In them, he substituted the lions on the Ashoka pillar with wolves and the word” truth” with corruption, so that the legend reads corruption will triumph.

Trivedi is from Kanpur in north India, and when he heard that the police in the western suburb of Bandra were purportedly looking for him, he came here and surrendered last Saturday. He was arrested, produced in holiday court and remanded to custody for seven days. The storm of protest broke almost immediately as lawyers, activists, journalists and even retired policemen and judges criticized the cops for over-reacting. The charge of sedition itself is seriously out-dated, having been drafted in by the British in 1860 to keep recalcitrant natives in control.

Rattled by the outcry, the police tried on Monday to get someone to produce a bail application. Trivedi refused to let this be done, insisting that the charges should be dropped. The police produced him in court and said they did not need him any longer since their investigation was complete. However, since there was no application for bail, the court had to remand him to custody till September 24. He is now in the central prison known as Arthur Road Jail, which houses the notorious Ajmal Kasab as well, the only survivor of the ten-member team that carried out a terrorist attack against Mumbai in November 2008.

Civil society is watching developments with keen interest. Not only have they come out in vociferous support, but the protests against Trivedi’s arrest have spread to other major urban centres as well. This time it looks as if people living in the world’s largest democracy will not sit down and shut up.

Listen to the report by Regional Correspondent Carol Andrade in India: