29/04/2024 - Indian artist Rachita Taneja lives through legal prosecution for her political stick-figure cartoons in Sama Pana’s documentary

Drawing a Line, the latest entry in the collection of documentaries about women cartoonists around the world, entitled “Drawing for Change!” and created by Belgium's Vincent Coen and Guillaume Vandenberghe, centres on Rachita Taneja, who is accused of contempt of India's Supreme Court. The film, which has just had its North American premiere at Hot Docs, was directed by Sama Pana, which is a pseudonym. With the court case ongoing throughout the filming, the helmer and the subject have to walk a paradoxical thin line between anonymity and raising awareness.

Taneja is famous for her series of stick-figure cartoons called “Sanitary Panels”, the very title of which points to her fearless feminist angle. The first cartoon she ever drew on her iPad was about censorship, as India's PM, Narendra Modi, has a history of arresting – and killing – journalists, artists and activists. The ones she is being prosecuted for, though, are not shown in the film, following the advice of her lawyers.

The director combines the interviews with Taneja, with the camera usually close to her very expressive face, with archive news reports, conversations with other independent thinkers, such as climate activist Disha Ravi, and animated stick-figure cartoons. One such segment, spread throughout the film, is told as a fairy tale about a leader who imposes his ideology on the land and creates a “hate factory”, which consists of his devout followers and silences dissenting voices. The voice-over tells us that such stories in autocratic societies have to be fairy tales, but the caricature of the leader and the abundance of saffron-coloured flowers in the cartoon leave no doubt as to who it is about. The orange hue of saffron has been a symbol of India for millennia, but Modi's ruling BJP party has co-opted it for its Hindu nationalistic policies, with the hate factory spewing constant online violence directed against the Muslim minority, while shocking abuse, rape and murder cases are regularly covered in the international media. Research for this article revealed that the contempt-of-court case was actually initiated by a law student. This sounds like a typical product of the hate factory, but it could also be a media spin intended to paint the case as a natural consequence of “the will of the people”.

Even Taneja pulled down one of her cartoons after legal threats, as it involved the national flag, a very easy basis for a judicial proceeding. With 170,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter combined, she regularly gets rape and death threats, and she fears for her safety as her address has been shared online. Standing on her balcony in the evening, the camera follows her gaze trained on an approaching motorcycle, only to reveal it's just a couple hurrying to get out of the rain.

But Taneja has many supporters, too, which we see at the Indie Comics Fest she hesitantly attends. She is a strong personality and tries to maintain a bright outlook despite everything that is happening to her, and she and the director often crack jokes about her situation. With the whimsical score that accompanies the animated scenes, the vibe of the film alternates between suspenseful and playful, grave and uplifting, mirroring Taneja's shifting state of mind and nerve-racking situation, as well as the deep divisions and absurd contrasts of Indian society. As the protagonist says, “It's amazing that the highest court of the world's largest democracy is dealing with stick figures.”

Drawing a Line is a co-production between Belgium's Clin d’oeil films, Luxembourg's a_BAHN and Germany's Shelter Prod, with Autlook Filmsales handling the international rights.