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Censorship – News Media/Documentaries

The Wire’s Instagram account was blocked in India for nearly two hours this evening (February 9, Monday).

The Instagram account, with over 1.3 million followers, is one of the most popular and widely followed social media handles for news, views, analysis, humour and satire online.

Readers who opened The Wire’s main Instagram page on Monday evening were greeted with a terse message saying the account was “not available in India … because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.”

A screenshot showing the ‘not available in India’ message on The Wire’s Instagram page.

Those with access to VPN or outside the borders of India were able to access the account.

When contacted, officials in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) told The Wire, “We have not blocked your account”.

The Wire has learned informally that the⁠ ministry asked Meta to block a 52-second satirical cartoon on Instagram and that the social media giant blocked the entire Instagram handle of The Wire ‘in error’. As of 8:30 pm, access to the main account was restored but the cartoon remained inaccessible. Facebook, where the cartoon has also been posted, has also blocked access to that specific cartoon in India.

Under India’s IT law, the ministry is required to inform a publisher in advance that it intends to block content to a particular article or page. The cartoon was posted on Instagram, Facebook and X at 6.30 pm on February 7 and to date, no written communication has been received by The Wire.

On February 10, the cartoon was blocked on X as well, with a message saying instead, “This Post from @thewire_in has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand.”

Censorship – Social Media

In a significant relief for film-maker Karan Johar, a Mumbai Sessions court on Monday restrained YouTuber Ajey Nagar, better known as CarryMinati, talent manager Deepak Char and others from publishing or circulating allegedly defamatory content against him on social media platforms.

The order was passed by the court of Principal Sessions Judge PG Bhonsale while hearing a civil suit filed by Johar through Apoorva Mehta, CEO of Dharma Productions.

Advocates Pradeep Gandhi and Parag Khandar, appearing for Johar, told the court that the social media influencers had made defamatory statements in videos uploaded on YouTube.

“The statements are so vulgar and abusive that they immediately needs to be taken down,” Gandhi argued, urging the court to intervene without delay.

The suit claimed that the content not only harmed Johar’s reputation but continued to circulate widely across platforms.

Advocates Vikas Khera and Amit Kukreja, representing Nagar, countered that the videos in question had already been taken down. They argued that once the content had been removed, there was no surviving cause for Johar to approach the court.

However, Gandhi responded that the matter did not end with the removal of the original uploads.

Censorship – The Arts

The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has refused screening permission for 19 films at the 2025 International Film Festival of Kerala. Several of the blocked titles deal with Palestine-related themes and a movie called Beef, (and deals with a completely unrelated topic)

The festival, being held in Thiruvananthapuram, began on December 12 and is scheduled to conclude on December 19. Among the films denied clearance are Palestinian works such as Palestine 36, Once Upon a Time in Gaza, All That’s Left of You and Wajib. The list also includes Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet-era classic widely regarded as a cornerstone of modern cinema for its revolutionary use of montage. The film celebrated its centenary this year and portrays a mutiny by Russian sailors against their superiors aboard the battleship Potemkin during the Revolution of 1905.

While films shown at festivals do not require censor certification, they must obtain an exemption from the Union Ministry. In earlier years, individual films were denied exemptions. Festival organisers say this is the first time such a large number of films have been refused permission, disrupting the event’s carefully planned schedule.

Cuckoo Parameswaran, the Vice Chairperson, IFFK told the media, “187 movies were sent to the I & B Ministry for exemption. We did not get approval yet for 19 movies. There are many people who took tickets (flight) and registered for IFFK to come here. This creates a lot of issues. Today (December 15) we had to cancel 9 movies, which is a huge disappointment.”

The affected list includes the Spanish film Beef, which focuses on the journey of a rap singer and has no connection to its title. Also denied is Santosh by Sandhya Suri, a film on casteism that has received international recognition, including at Cannes, but has not yet been released in India. Suri is serving as a jury member at this year’s IFFK.

Two acclaimed films by Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako — Timbuktu and Bamako — have also been refused permission, despite the director being honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival.

Several films on the list, including the Egyptian drama Clash and Fernando Solanas’s The Hour of the Furnaces from Argentina, were screened in earlier editions of IFFK.

Other titles denied clearance include Eagles of the Republic, Heart of The Wolf, Red Rain, Riverstone, Tunnels: Sun in the Dark, Yes and Flames.

The issue surfaced after multiple screenings were cancelled on December 14 and 15.

Veteran filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan criticised the decision sharply. He told the media, “All these movies are very important movies in the history of cinema. If they say it cannot be screened then that is because of ignorance. The movie ‘Battleship Potemkin’ can be considered a textbook to study cinema. People who have no clue about all these are doing this. The authorities should reconsider this decision.”