India bans 'pajeet' meme, demands global platforms enforce takedown worldwide
India bans 'pajeet' meme, demands global platforms enforce takedown worldwide
Weeks after cracking down on political memes, Indian government censors have opened a new front: globally enforcing the removal of "pajeet," a long-running racist caricature of Indians used across social media platforms.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's go next to India, where the government has declared a long-running internet slur a matter of national dignity — and is now ordering social media platforms around the world to scrub it from their services. Free speech advocates say the order is the broadest extraterritorial takedown demand any democracy has ever issued. NPR's Raj Pratap Singh reports from New Delhi.
RAJ PRATAP SINGH, BYLINE: Earlier this month, India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology declared the "pajeet" meme — a slur and cartoonish caricature used to mock people of Indian origin — a prohibited form of speech under the new Dignity of the Indian Abroad Act. Sharing the meme, hosting it, or failing to remove it within a fixed window is now a criminal offense, carrying up to seven years in prison for individuals and daily fines of ten crore rupees for platforms.
The law applies not only inside India, but to any platform accessible by Indian users. In practice, officials say, that means the world.
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UNION MINISTER ASHWINI VAISHNAW: If your feed reaches a single phone in Mumbai, you are within our jurisdiction. The dignity of 1.4 billion people is not a matter for a foreign comment section.
SINGH: Within 72 hours of the gazette notification, Meta, X, Reddit, Telegram, and TikTok had all received sweeping takedown orders listing more than 180,000 posts and accounts. Two people inside the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the orders, said legal teams are scrambling to determine whether to comply, geoblock, or resist.
Free-speech advocates call the order unprecedented in scale.
PRATEEK WAGHRE: It's one thing to demand takedowns inside your own borders. It's another to demand the permanent erasure of a word from the global internet.
SINGH: That's Prateek Waghre, an internet policy researcher with Tech Global Institute. He says the same legal machinery India has used against domestic satirists — including a three-hour compliance window for blocking orders — is now being pointed outward.
AKASH KARMAKAR: The three-hour rule was extreme when it applied to a tweet in Delhi. Applied globally, it is effectively an emergency takedown button for any content the Indian state finds unflattering.
SINGH: That's Akash Karmakar, a New Delhi-based lawyer who specializes in technology law. The meme itself, long a fixture of English-language imageboards, is a grotesque caricature built around a slur. Anti-hate organizations have for years catalogued its use in harassment campaigns against South Asians, and Indian officials cited that record directly. But critics say the law sweeps much further.
RAHIMA PATEL: Pajeet is a slur. I have been called it. I don't want it in my timeline. But I also don't want the Indian government deciding what every person on Earth is allowed to post.
SINGH: That's Rahima Patel, a Brooklyn-based comedian who has written extensively about the meme. She and several other diaspora artists say the enforcement order sweeps in satire, academic discussion, and their own reclamation jokes — all flagged for removal.
Indian officials are unmoved. The IT ministry has already issued a second gazette notice listing a dozen additional slurs and caricatures it intends to add to the registry in the coming weeks. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a brief statement posted to X before the post itself was removed by the ministry, called the law a shield for every Indian, wherever they stand.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) Block you. Ban you. Block you.
SINGH: Raj Pratap Singh, NPR News, New Delhi.
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