Aditi Phadnis: A different take on the Aseem Trivedi row

Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi says from jail: “If speaking the truth is sedition, then I am guilty of sedition”.

Wait a minute. What is the ‘truth’? What he calls his cartoons, which are frankly, pretty unsophisticated.

An Indian politician and a bureaucrat assaulting a woman draped in a sari bearing the Indian tricolour? And a drawing of building that looks like the Indian Parliament labeled 'National Toilet'?

They’re a lot like the slogans you see put up by the Delhi Police: ‘Crime Does Not Pay’, ‘Speed Thrills but Kills…’ etc.  You know what I mean – the message is the message, loud and clear, no ambivalence, no freedom to the viewer/witness to decide what the image might represent. ..To many of us, the ultimate juvenile cliché. ‘I am Aseem Trivedi and take it from me, politicians and bureaucrats are the scum of the earth’ Well, you can take it or leave it, just shrug and move on: because the message is delivered with such a heavy hand, it is very George Bush-like.You can either be for it or against it.

Doesn’t provoke much thinking.

Trivedi was to leave for the US to get an award. But he ended up in judicial custody instead, for sedition.

Puhleeez…

Mediocre cartooning might be a crime against expression and art. But sedition?

Actually, Trivedi needs to be called to court every day or every other day to explain what his cartoons are. How many times a day do politicians and bureaucrats have their way with the woman in the tricolour, how many people use the National Toilet, how much does he think the cost is per capita, how many people DON’T use the toilet and how much the loss to the national exchequer is because a facility built at public cost is being underutilised…

The debate is similar to the issues thrown up during the Lajja/Tasleema Nasreen discourse. Can a piece of mediocre art ever become subversive or seditious?