The Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan’s digital version, Vikatan Plus, published a cartoon depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in handcuffs, sitting next to a laughing Donald Trump, on 10 February. Five days later, Vikatan employees suddenly found their website blocked, via a confidential order issued by the ministry of information and broadcasting. The magazine was not even made aware of the MIB directive until the next day, when it received the order.
The illustration referenced the mass deportation of Indians under the US president’s anti-immigration crackdown, during which over a hundred Indians were forcibly put on an aircraft, their hands and legs chained for nearly forty hours, with limited access to food and restrooms. The official MIB notice stated that the Vikatan website had been taken down on “emergency orders,” under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, which allows the government to remove online content on grounds such as the “interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement.” K Annamalai, the Tamil Nadu president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, had filed the complaint to the MIB, claiming that the news portal had published “offensive and baseless content” about Modi. This is all it takes today to take down a piece of content in Modi’s India: a notion of aggrieved sentiment.
In 2023, the government had used the same IT Act against the BBC Documentary India: The Modi Question, which looked at how Modi handled the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom when he was chief minister of Gujarat. The documentary never aired in India, but many clips were shared widely online, several of which the government banned, claiming that the documentary was a “propaganda piece designed to push a particular discredited narrative.” Last year, The Caravan, too, received a notice to take down its investigation into the torture and murder of civilians by the Indian Army in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. No specific details of the complainant or the complaint, beyond sweeping generalisations, were given. Not a single factual inaccuracy in the article was pointed out. After a perfunctory inter-departmental committee meeting where it was clear that the members’ minds were already made up, the MIB sent an order asking for the article to be taken down that evening—stating that non-compliance would result in the entire website being taken down.
Section 69A, then, allows the government immediate censorship powers over individuals and platforms, with no need for arbitration by the court and no substantive opportunity to defend one’s case. It stands as testimony to just how radically the information economy has changed in Modi’s India. Most people now understand that, in mainstream media outlets, news is actively suppressed or spun in favour of the government. On television, our attention is continuously redirected and overwhelmed by frivolous issues, and legacy English media has weakened its own standards while trying to avoid government scrutiny. Although social media and the internet are still spaces where information can flow somewhat organically, the government has been casting a wide regulatory net to also bring them under its surveillance and control.