The skit – which was made in Connaught Place and put online on December 17th and 18th – had two people in Santa suits with masks for pollution falling down in the street. Bharadwaj is in the video pretending to give CPR as people look on. The video said ‘Santa Claus fainted in Delhi pollution’ and was to show how the city’s air was getting worse.
The air quality in Delhi
On the day the video was shared, Delhi’s Air Quality Index was ‘very poor’. In some areas of the city, the AQI was over 300, which is known to make breathing and heart problems worse and cause health warnings.
The complaint and the FIR
The FIR was made after a complaint from lawyer Khushboo George, who said that showing Santa Claus fainting and being used as something to lean on was a bad way to show a Christian symbol that people respected. The complaint said the timing – so close to Christmas – was done on purpose to make religious people angry.
Police said a case was opened under the parts of the law dealing with hurting religious feelings. They added that they are looking at all parts of the video – what it meant and how it affected people – and, at the time of writing, no one had been arrested.
How AAP answered
Bharadwaj said the case was done for political reasons and that the skit was a calm protest to show how bad Delhi’s air quality was. He said the video started a bigger talk about the AQI, who was to blame for the environment, and what needed to be done to keep the public healthy. He also questioned whether the person who complained was fair and said the people looking into things were being used to scare people who were against the government.
AAP kept doing protests in central Delhi, with people in Santa suits showing that pollution was a health problem every winter, not a political one. The party said they did not mean to show a lack of respect for religion.
What the BJP said
Leaders from Delhi’s BJP said no one had the right to make a community’s religious symbol unimportant for politics. They said people in the public eye had to respect people’s dignity and not do things that could make trouble in society. They also said the law would do what it had to.
On Thursday, Delhi’s average AQI was 241, which is ‘poor’ – a little better than the recent ‘very poor’ times. Earlier in the week, the Commission for Air Quality Management took away Stage 4 rules from the Graded Response Action Plan, after the pollution got a little better.
But weather groups are saying the AQI might get worse again because of slower winds and conditions that don’t help the air to spread. GRAP is a system of levels that starts stronger and stronger rules as the air gets worse in Delhi-NCR, looking at things like dust from building, gases from cars, and what factories make.
Why this case is important
This event is where political talk, how people feel about religion, and worry about the environment come together. It shows how art as protest and jokes, made bigger by social media, can come up against laws that protect religious feelings – especially around holidays. It also shows the increasing political blame game about Delhi’s pollution, a problem every winter because of the weather, what people in the area do, and things from other places.
People who study public health have for a long time warned that ‘very poor’ and ‘severe’ AQI levels make risks for children, older people and those with health problems already. As the legal process goes on, the main thing people are looking at is constant, many-group action to lower what is put into the air, improve looking at the air, and build trust in the public through clear rules.
For now, the FIR against Bharadwaj, Jha, and Khan adds a new part to the Delhi pollution talk. The police inquiry is still going on, and more is expected to happen as the people looking into it look at the videos, complaints, and what the people making the skit meant to do.
