Political Satire in India — From Faking News to CJP
Satire has always been a tool of political commentary in India, but the institutional version is mostly dead. Newspaper cartoonists who could shape public opinion in the 1980s and 1990s — R K Laxman, Mario Miranda, Sudhir Dar — have no clear successors at scale. The English-language satire site Faking News, run by Rahul Roushan, was a brief institutional moment from 2008 to 2017 before its closure under Network18.
What replaced it
Two things. First, individual commentators on YouTube and Instagram — channels that combine news commentary with stand-up sensibility, building audiences in the millions. Second, decentralised meme accounts on Instagram and X, where the same satirical impulse exists but is fragmented across thousands of pages without a single editorial voice or institutional identity.
Why this matters
Satire works best when it has a stable home. Cartoonists in newspapers had a regular slot. SNL has a regular slot. Faking News had a recognisable URL. Today's satirical commentary is high-volume but home-less — you see the meme, you laugh, you forget which account posted it, you scroll on. The political impact of satire compounds when it has continuity. A name, a face, an institution.
What CJP is trying
CJP is a thought experiment about what an institution-shaped satirical political project would look like in 2026. Not a meme account. Not a YouTube channel. A full website with a manifesto, a member roster, a card generator, a meme wall, and a blog. The format borrows from real political parties: cards, demands, chapters, founders. The content borrows from satire: the absurdity is the message.
What we are not
We are not a registered political party. We are not a media company. We are not aggregating other people's content. We are a small art project trying to write its way into the conversation by doing the work, slowly. If it works, it works. If it does not, the manifesto remains a useful read.
Further reading
Faking News: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faking_News. The Wire (founded in 2015 as an independent reaction to mainstream consolidation): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire_(India).
“Main bhi cockroach. Tum bhi banno.”