Crackdown on anti-Modi slurs: College editors arrested in new Kerala case

"...On Friday police on registered a case against the Principal and 11 students of the Sree Krishnan College at Guruvayur after its campus magazine was found to have used "objectionable and unsavoury" language against Modi, garbed in the guise of a cross-word puzzle... The incident comes close on the heels of the arrest of the principal and six students of the Government polytechnic at Kunnamkulam. These students and the principal were arrested for adding PM Modi's photograph in the college magazine under a list of "negative faces" along with Adolf Hitler, George W Bush, Osama bin Laden and, sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) supremo V Prabhakaran and others... In Karnataka, an MBA student Sayed Waqar from Bhatkal was arrested based on a complaint lodged in Belgaum district by RTI activist Jayant Mukund Tinaikar, who said he received an offensive message against Modi on 16 May on WhatsApp... In Goa, police had booked a young shipping professional for a Facebook post which said that the Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi would start a holocaust in India. Devu Chodankar had written on a Facebook forum on Goa+, a popular forum with over 47,000 members, if elected to power, Modi would unleash a 'holocaust'...

The alacrity with which police is acting against those who are seen as being critical of the current Prime Minister is unnerving at many levels. To argue that there is a deeper conspiracy behind every anti-Modi message sounds hilarious and over-stretched but it is also worrisome given that many sections of the law are unclear on what could be deemed offensive. They also confirm the fear that any kind of dissent or criticism of the Modi government won't be tolerated at all. And yes, the double standard of these arrest that can't be ignored...

While there's no denying that some of the anti-Modi messages were extreme in the kind of language that was used, the kind of invective that has been and continues to be poured on the Gandhi family, notably Sonia and Rahul, and Manmohan Singh is no less hateful. BJP member Subramanian Swamy has made a career out of inventing new insults for Sonia and Rahul, and these are mild in comparison to the works employed by the average commenter...." (Read full article.)