Description
This paper analyses the role of humour used in cartoons which forms bottom-up power to maintain democracy. It not only enacts as bottom-up power but also embodies the freedom to offend. Using eight Indian political cartoons published between 2014 and 2019, during the first term of the current ruling government, this study explores how these very cartoons of Satish Acharya- a famous Indian cartoonist depicts the Indian Prime Minister and the evolving image of his leadership. Hence, the article investigates: in what ways does incongruous humour function as a phenomenon of bottom-up power and as freedom to offend? Employing a semiotic and rhetorical mode of reading, I would like to outline the following inductive categorisation of the nature of humour in political cartoons: contradictory exposure, playful reframing, moral ridicule, and authoritarian unmasking. This approach provides me ways to decipher the nuances of visual satire as both a form of critique and regulation of political power to keep the democracy alive. Instead of focusing the cartoons as messages that find their significance in the form of audience response or journalistic merit, I see them as visual practice of power that has the power in itself to question the authority. Therefore, in doing so, the paper situates humour in political cartoons not as disruption, but as a democratic gesture that keeps power accountable in the visual field of politics.
