India has several “holy cows” at which one cannot poke fun, but national security is the “ultimate holy cow” across the country, the Madras High Court observed in its order dated December 17, Bar and Bench reported.

The court was hearing a petition by a man named Mathivanan, an office-bearer of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). The Tamil Nadu Police had filed a first information report against him after he posted photos on Facebook from a vacation to the Sirumalai Hills. He had posted the caption “Trip to Sirumalai for shooting practice” with the photographs, seemingly in a lighter vein.

The police, in the FIR, had invoked provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to collecting arms with the intent of waging war against the government, criminal conspiracy, causing fear or alarm among the public and criminal intimidation by anonymous communication. The court quashed the FIR, saying it was “absurd” and was an “abuse of the legal process”.

Justice GR Swaminathan, in the judgement, referred to satirists and cartoonists Jug Suraiya, Bachi Karkaria, EP Unny and G Sampath. He quipped that if they had written the verdict, they would have amended the Constitution to include a fundamental “duty to laugh”.

“Any normal and and reasonable person coming across the Facebook post would have laughed it off,” the judge said, according to the Hindustan Times.

The court noted that Mathivanan could be seen with his family members in the photographs, and no weapon or any prohibited object was recovered from him. The judge also questioned how the police accused him of criminal conspiracy when he was the sole accused person.

“To constitute the offence of conspiracy, there must be a meeting of two or more minds,” Justice Swaminathan said. “One cannot conspire with oneself.”

The judge noted that India has “holy cows grazing all over from Varanasi [in Uttar Pradesh] to Vadipatty [in Tamil Nadu]”. He said that such holy cows vary from region to region.

“A real cow, even if terribly underfed and emaciated, shall be holy in Yogi’s terrain,” Justice Swaminathan said. “In West Bengal, Tagore is such an iconic figure that Khushwant Singh learnt the lesson at some cost. Coming to my own Tamil Desh, the all-time iconoclast ‘Periyar’ Shri EV Ramasamy is a super-holy cow.”

The judge observed that Marx and Lenin in Kerala, and Shivaji and VD Savarkar in Maharashtra hold a similar status. “But all over India, there is one ultimate holy cow and that is ‘national security’,” he said.

On the petitioner’s designation, Justice Swaminathan said that he was a “an important office-bearer of a not-so-important political party”.

The judge added, “Paper warriors are also entitled to fantasise that they are swadeshi Che Guevaras.”

Che Guevara was a Latin American revolutionary who became an international icon after his death.