Indian Cartoonists Say Instagram Restrictions Are Silencing Political Satire

Indian cartoonist Satish Acharya has seen his Instagram account blocked in India twice in the space of three weeks, in a case that has sharpened concerns about how legal orders are used to limit political satire.

The 55-year-old said he found on Tuesday that his profile had once again been briefly made unavailable in India, allegedly with no explanation from the platform. Earlier, his account was restricted from 28 September to 6 October. During that period, users in India could not find it through search or reach it through a web link, and instead saw a notice saying it was unavailable under the country's Information Technology Rules.

Those rules let authorities and courts order social media platforms to remove or restrict content. The government says they help deal with unlawful material, while artists and free-speech advocates argue they can choke India's long tradition of political satire.

Acharya told the BBC that Meta platforms had limited the reach of his cartoons for some years, but that losing his whole profile in India left him "a little sad". He wrote to Meta, Instagram's parent company, and got no reply. He says he was getting ready to go to court when the account returned in early October, only to be blocked again for three days this week.

Weeks earlier, cartoonist Manjul found that Instagram had restricted a post criticising India's election commission over its contested revision of voter rolls, which removed 130 million names. His profile stayed accessible. Meta told the BBC it may temporarily restrict accounts to comply with the IT Rules, but did not explain why Acharya's account or Manjul's post was affected.

The Indian Express reported that government agencies sent nearly 195,000 blocking and content-restriction orders to platforms including Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July through the Sahyog portal. The figures came from a right-to-information request and do not show how many posts were eventually restricted or removed. The BBC has not seen the original response. Technology policy expert Prateek Waghre said some platforms, Meta in particular, "seem more willing to comply", while X appears more willing to push back, though limited public data makes comparison difficult. Media outlets also reported this week that authorities asked Meta to ensure its systems did not steer users towards "a single or limited set of narratives". The BBC has asked India's IT ministry for comment and has not had a response.

Satire has a long history in India, and so do efforts to curb it. RK Laxman's Common Man became one of the best-known figures in Indian journalism, and during the Emergency in the 1970s Abu Abraham kept drawing even as dozens of his cartoons were stamped "not passed by censors". In 2012, cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested on sedition charges over cartoons allegedly mocking the constitution, though the charges were later dropped. India ranks 157th in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, and the government rejects criticism that it pressures independent media.

Cartoonists say challenging power is the heart of the job. "We are among the default opposition," said Sandeep Adhwaryu, a cartoonist at a leading Indian newspaper. Acharya said that before 2014 many of his cartoons targeted the Congress-led government and were shared by BJP leaders, and that he faced no official restrictions then, only occasional trolling. Social media let independent artists reach audiences without newspapers, Manjul said, but it also leaves them dependent on platforms. Rachita Taneja, creator of the Instagram comic Sanitary Panels, called social media a double-edged sword and said Meta's compliance reflects commercial priorities. Meta declined to comment.

Adhwaryu warned that self-censorship can become normalised even without explicit instructions. Still, he expects satire to adapt, comparing it to a "shape-shifting virus" that "keeps mutating in response to its environment". When Acharya's account was first restricted, Taneja drew a stick-figure cartoon in solidarity.