AIB Members Might Go To Jail For Putting Modi¡¯s Look-Alike In A Snapchat Filter. Like Seriously?

So, you can troll Rahul Gandhi but not PM Modi. Because equality, you know?

It¡¯s not like you have not been trolling politicians in the past. There are innumerable trolls and memes on Rahul Gandhi. There are trolls where people have morphed his parliamentary speeches in order to induce laughter from them. We have seen all sorts of demeaning contents in his name. In fact, it is said that political parties often get involved in taking potshots at their opponents and most of the times they are behind this, and here we are fussing over a Snapchat filter.

For the unversed, AIB created a meme like they have been doing for a very long time (like they morphed PC¡¯s pictures poking fun at her attire). This time they committed an ¡°offence¡± by posting an image of a Modi look-alike at a railway station but they morphed it to add the most popular snapchat filter to it ¨C of a dog. The meme was seen as a dig at the Modi¡¯s foreign tours and received backlash with strong reactions. So much so, that after a complaint AIB has been charged with defamation under the IT Act whose punishment is up to three years of imprisonment apart from a fine of Rs 5 lakh.

Publicity theek hai yaar, lage haath thode nationalist sentiments aur hurt kar lo cuz Modi goes hand in hand. Magar joke to dhang ka ho! pic.twitter.com/sLSo4EyMHy

¡ª A La' Vile De Satara (@AdvancedMaushi) July 13, 2017

If a lot of people were offended by a meme in this case and that it failed at its attempt of poking fun, clearly, it was taken down soon after, right? Ideally, the discussion should have ended there but it didn¡¯t. And just to remind you again, the man was PM Modi¡¯s look-alike.

PS: Will continue making jokes. And deleting if necessary. And making jokes again. And Apologizing if necessary. Don't care what you think.

¡ª Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) July 13, 2017

And this brings us to a bigger question ¨C can jokes only be aimed at poor people, who don¡¯t really raise their voice against it because they have other serious problems to deal with? Switch on the TV and see the kind of comedy they do and we laugh at. From making men dressed up as women to poke fun at them to trolling the poor from the audience and mocking them, all go around on TV. Celebrities are trolled every other day, people abuse them too. Many have quit Twitter in the wake of the same. Swara Bhaskar once said that she also wanted to quit Twitter after people threatened her to take her life.

AIB also ended up in a legal mess when their infamous roast show. Also, for trolling Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar using snapchat filters. And now again, they have ended up being in hot water. So, is it time to set guidelines of what kind of jokes can be made? Is it really the time to go bizarre?