Shut Up India: Criticise or mimic Modi at your peril 

‘Shut up India’ and ‘Start up India’ cannot go together, said Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday, while addressing the PHD Chamber of Commerce in the National Capital on Thursday. And while the BJP dismissed the jibe as ‘typical rhetoric’, more and more examples are tumbling out to establish an undeclared emergency in the country.

In May this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have tweeted, “ We certainly need more humour in public life,” but the Great Indian Laughter Challenge on the Star TV network dropped stand-up comic Shyam Rangeela’s mimicking act of the PM. Rangeela, who is from Rajasthan, was then told that he could mimic Congress VP Rahul Gandhi but not the PM. Finally, he was told that he could mimic neither.

Interestingly, the clip featuring his performance got leaked and went viral on social media. If the PM had a sense of humour, he would have invited the artist to a special performance at his residence, suggested observers. But then, Rangeela is lucky that he doesn’t have a police case against him yet and has not landed in jail like several others.

It wasn’t the first time that an artist had been asked not to poke fun at PM Modi. In July, comedy group AIB was accused of posting offensive content on PM Modi in a complaint filed with Mumbai Police. AIB had posted an image of lookalike of Modi at a railway station, along with a photograph of PM Modi with a Snapchat dog filter, captioned #wanderlust.

Not only comics, academics are also being targeted for criticising the BJP and Modi on TV. The Union Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) is acting on a BJP parliamentarian’s complaint against a JNU professor for comments made on TV in July. During a discussion on Al Jazeera, Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy attacked Modi for not visiting Palestine while he was in Israel. Chenoy had also referred to the Gujarat “genocide” and described the BJP as “anti-Muslim”.

The complaint was filed with parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar on July 6 by Satya Pal Singh—a former police officer, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh and became a minister of state in the HRD ministry last month—accusing the professor of making anti-India comments.

On October 16, police in upper Assam’s Jorhat district arrested a Central Reserve Police Force constable for allegedly posting derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on social media platforms. The CRPF had sacked him a day before his arrest. He was arrested following a case filed on behalf of Commandant Balram Behera.

In May 2014, five students were detained by Bangalore Police in Congress-ruled Karnataka for allegedly circulating anti-Narendra Modi messages on smartphone messenger WhatsApp.

In June 2014, a principal of a government polytechnic college, along with seven others, including four students, a lecturer, staff editor and designer of the college magazine, was arrested on charges of defaming PM Modi by featuring his photo in the college magazine under a list of “negative faces” along with Adolf Hitler, George W Bush, Osama bin Laden and a few others.

In November 2016, a 19-year-old student, Abhishek Mishra – who describes himself as an RTI activist – was arrested by Madhya Pradesh Police for his social media posts which were seen as being critical of PM Modi and the state’s chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, on the issue of demonetisation.

On May 3 this year, a shop employee and an administrator of a WhatsApp group were arrested in Karnataka for allegedly circulating an offensive message with a morphed picture of PM Modi.

Earlier this month, Kanpur Police slapped criminal cases against 22 traders for putting up hoardings and posters comparing PM Modi with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Hurt by demonetisation, the businessmen had said that Modi was destroying the economy.