See All News by Ravish Kumar
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When the Government
Bans the Joke,
It Confesses Its Own Fear
India's ruling dispensation is no longer satisfied silencing journalists. It has moved on to comedians, cartoonists, animators — and now, you.
There is something uniquely revealing about a government that is afraid of a joke about a cooking-gas cylinder. A comedian makes a reel. It goes viral. And within days, his Facebook page — built over years, his livelihood — disappears from India. No explanation. No notice. No due process. Just: gone.
That is where we are. That is what India's digital landscape looks like in 2026. Pages are being pulled down. YouTube channels suspended. News portals blocked. Cartoonists' work removed from the internet and, in quiet defiance, pinned to the walls of Delhi's Press Club. An animation studio's three videos banned, not for incitement, not for sedition — but for existing at a frequency the government finds uncomfortable.
Ask yourself one question: if the government were confident, why would it be afraid of a cartoon?
"If you cannot handle a question, banning the questioner is not governance. It is cowardice dressed up in the language of national security."
The Takedown Machine
The cases are no longer isolated. Over the last several weeks, a pattern has crystallised into something systemic. Comedian Rajeev Nigam's Facebook page was blocked in India. He told The Quint that he was not even informed which post triggered the action — his best guess is a satirical reel about LPG prices.[1] "My page will not be visible to people in India," he tweeted. "And this has not happened only to me."
He is right. The satirical outlet Molitix had its Facebook page restricted under Section 79(3) of the IT Act — again, without being told which content violated which rule, and without being given an opportunity to respond.[2] Its cartoons — which Indian audiences had freely viewed for years — were pulled from the internet and displayed physically at Delhi's Press Club, because that was the only screen the government couldn't reach.
News channel 4PM has been blocked and has approached the Delhi High Court. National Dastak was targeted. Dhruv Rathi's three animation videos were banned in India.[3] The Kerala-based MediaOne TV was shuttered for over a year on "national security" grounds — a claim the Supreme Court eventually tore apart, fined the government for, and reversed. But by then, the channel had lost journalists, revenue, and months of its institutional life.[4]
This is not a crackdown on disinformation. This is a crackdown on discomfort.
The American Mirror
Sometimes it takes a foreign government's bureaucratic paperwork to state plainly what domestic silence refuses to say. The Office of the United States Trade Representative submitted a report to the US Congress and President on March 31, 2025. Its finding on India was blunt: tech companies — YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram — are receiving content removal orders from Indian authorities at such volume and at such speed that they are unable to comply in time.[5]
The report further observed that the manner in which these orders are being issued appears to be politically motivated — not a response to genuine threats, but a routine mechanism of suppression.[6]
Read that carefully. The United States government — hardly a crusading civil liberties organisation — has put on record that India's content-removal regime looks like politics, not policy.
And yet, India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has pointed to deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation as justification for these crackdowns. That argument might carry weight if the targets were deepfake factories. But Molitix is not a deepfake studio. 4PM is not an AI bot. Rajeev Nigam is a human being who made a joke about a gas cylinder. The AI defence is a red herring, and a transparent one.
"The US government's trade report said what Indian mainstream media would not: India's content-removal orders appear politically motivated."
The Law They Are Building
What is happening today through executive orders is about to be institutionalised through law. The government has proposed sweeping amendments to India's digital media regulations, with public consultations open until April 14. What the new draft would establish, if passed, is a surveillance architecture of remarkable scope.[7]
Under the proposed rules: social media platforms would be required to conduct pre-upload content checks; user data would have to be retained and handed over on government demand; and — most significantly — the Digital Media Ethics Code, previously applicable only to registered news publishers, would now extend to any individual who posts news or current affairs content on social media.[8]
That means you. The person who makes a reel about a politician's speech. The student who shares a video of a protest. The homemaker who reposts a news clip. All of you would fall under a government-supervised content-review mechanism. You could be reported, reviewed — and silenced — even without a formal complaint.
The Internet Freedom Foundation's Apar Gupta has warned that the draft's implications go far beyond what the government is advertising. This is not about cleaning up misinformation. This is about building the infrastructure for total digital control — and doing it while the public is still being told it is about deepfakes.
The Double Standard That Tells the Whole Story
Here is a simple question. Which channels were found guilty of spreading hate speech and communal content by broadcast regulators? The answer is the same channels that have been receiving thousands of crores of rupees in government advertising contracts. The News Broadcasters' Standards Authority levied fines. Anchors were censured. And yet — not one of these channels was taken off air for a single day.[9]
Meanwhile: independent journalists whose channels receive no government advertising find their Facebook pages blocked, their YouTube handles suspended, their income streams severed.
The principle being applied is not legality. It is loyalty.
Channels that ask no questions get crores. Channels that ask questions get shut down. This equation is not a conspiracy theory — it is the observable, documented reality of Indian media in 2025. The public has understood it. Viewership of so-called "godi media" has collapsed, not because of regulation, but because audiences stopped trusting them. But the government's response to losing the information war is not to earn trust — it is to delete the competition.
What Kind of Democracy Remains?
Narendra Modi has been Prime Minister for over a decade. He has not held a single press conference in twelve years.[10] Not one. He speaks in monologues — to a camera, on his terms, with no questioner, no follow-up, no accountability. That is his relationship with the free press: it does not exist.
And now, having converted mainstream television into a stage-managed applause machine, the government has turned its attention to the only spaces where inconvenient questions were still being asked — social media, independent YouTube channels, satirical pages, comedy reels.
Compare this to the United States, where Tucker Carlson — a deeply controversial commentator — openly accused the American government of being controlled by Israeli interests. No takedown. No criminal case. No page restriction. Trump's government dislikes him. But it has not deleted him.
In India, the threshold for deletion is a joke about a cooking-gas cylinder.
And when you silence that joke, when you pull down that cartoon, when you block that satirical page — you are not protecting national security. You are announcing, to your own people and to the world, that you cannot handle the truth. That you have run out of answers. That the only tool left in your hands is fear.
One hundred and forty crore people deserve a Prime Minister who can face their questions. What they have is a government that deletes the questions instead.
Facts
- Comedian Rajeev Nigam's Facebook page was blocked in India without prior notice or stated reason; he told The Quint he suspects it was due to a satirical post about LPG cylinder prices.
- Satirical outlet Molitix had its Facebook page restricted in India under IT Act Section 79(3); it was not informed which content violated any rule, nor given opportunity to respond. Its removed cartoons were subsequently displayed at Delhi Press Club.
- The US Office of the Trade Representative submitted a report to Congress on March 31, 2025, stating that India's content-removal orders are issued at such frequency and speed that tech platforms cannot comply in time, and that the orders "appear politically motivated."
- The Indian government proposed reducing the mandatory content-removal window from 2–3 hours to 1 hour, as reported by The Indian Express citing government sources.
- The proposed amendments to India's digital media rules — open for public consultation until April 14, 2025 — would extend the Digital Media Ethics Code to any individual posting news or current affairs content on social media, not just registered publishers.
- Dhruv Rathi's three animation videos were banned in India.
- Kerala's MediaOne TV was banned for over a year by the central government citing national security. The Supreme Court overturned the ban and issued a strong rebuke to the government.
- 4PM News channel has been restricted and has filed a petition before the Delhi High Court.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not held a press conference in over 12 years in power.
- The News Broadcasters' Standards Authority has fined and censured pro-government TV channels for spreading hate speech and communal content — yet none were taken off air, and these channels continue to receive substantial government advertising.
Criticisms
- The Modi government has weaponised IT Act provisions — particularly Section 79(3) — as a tool of political suppression, blocking independent journalists and satirists without due process, notice, or right of reply.
- Twelve years in power without a single press conference is not humility — it is contempt for democratic accountability. A head of government who refuses to be questioned is not governing; he is ruling.
- The government's use of "national security" as a blanket justification for banning channels like MediaOne — a claim the Supreme Court dismantled — reveals a pattern of using legal weaponry not to protect the nation but to protect the ruling party from scrutiny.
- The proposed digital media rules, which would subject ordinary citizens' social media posts to government review and potential deletion, represent an authoritarian expansion of state power over public speech dressed up as a regulatory reform.
- The double standard is indefensible: pro-government channels found guilty of hate speech by independent broadcast bodies face zero action and continue to receive thousands of crores in government advertisements, while independent platforms are blocked for asking factual questions.
- Framing the crackdown on independent media under the banner of fighting deepfakes and AI misinformation is dishonest. The targeted accounts — Molitix, 4PM, Rajeev Nigam, Dhruv Rathi — are identifiable human journalists, satirists, and animators, not AI bots.
- The government's IT Cell has industrialised disinformation and communal propaganda on social media for years. The selective enforcement of content rules against critics, while leaving this ecosystem untouched, is not neutrality — it is complicity.
- By attacking the livelihoods of content creators — not just their speech — the government is deploying economic violence as a tool of censorship, targeting people's incomes and livelihoods to enforce silence.
- BJP's silence — from party workers to MPs to Mohan Bhagwat — in the face of this press freedom assault is a form of institutional endorsement. If they genuinely believe in democracy, they must say so publicly and loudly.
- A government so fearful of a cartoon, a comedy reel, and an animation video has already answered the question of whether it has the confidence to face its own people.
Sources & Citations
- Rajeev Nigam statement to The Quint regarding Facebook page restriction, 2025.
- Molitix statement on Facebook page ban, citing IT Act Section 79(3), reported by multiple outlets, 2025.
- Reports on Dhruv Rathi animation video bans in India, 2025.
- Supreme Court of India ruling overturning the central government's ban on MediaOne TV; Court reprimand on record.
- Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), 2025 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, submitted to US Congress and President, March 31, 2025.
- Ibid., USTR Report on India section: characterisation of content-removal orders as appearing "politically motivated."
- Draft amendments to India's Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021; public consultation period ending April 14, 2025.
- Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF); Apar Gupta's public commentary on proposed draft rules, 2025.
- News Broadcasters Standards Authority (NBSA) orders against pro-government television channels for content violations, 2022–2024.
- Multiple documented instances confirming PM Modi's 12-year record of no formal press conferences; cited by domestic and international press freedom organisations.
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