NEW DELHI, April 26 -- George Bernard Shaw, whose understanding of human frailties was Freudian, had famously said that "if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they will kill you." This sage advice is worth remembering at a time when a mere tweet can lead to incarceration, where lynching is an ever-present reality and vigilantes lurk just around the corner.
There are those who believe that the safest medium for expressing dissent is the lowly cartoon with its caricatured image, often wordless, or stand-up comedy that provokes thought and laughs. But then, in our dysfunctional world, comedian Munawar Faruqui is thrashed by vigilantes in Bhopal and then jailed, without proof, for allegedly "hurting religious sentim...