Indian man sending WhatsApp a legal notice over middle finger emoji is perfect end to 2017
Back in 2013, HeartRanjan, a humour blogger, wrote about what people from different nationalities are good at. Under Indians, it was “taking offence”. Four years later, little has changed. Almost every other day, India sees its fair share of frivolous lawsuits and litigations. These vexatious litigations do nothing more than waste everyone’s time and add to the burden of the already overburdened Indian courts. But sometimes, they also manage to make everyone chuckle because of the sheer ridiculousness of these suits.
Such is the case of Gurmeet Singh, a Delhi-based advocate, who on December 26, sent a legal notice to WhatsApp – the instant messaging service owned by Facebook – asking the company to remove an emoji; more specifically, the “middle finger” emoji. The middle finger is a popularly used obscene hand gesture that communicates moderate to extreme contempt, and is roughly equivalent in meaning to "f*ck off", "up yours", "go f*ck yourself" etc.
According to Singh, showing the middle finger is illegal by virtue of it being an obscene gesture, something that would be an offence in India. In the notice, Singh wrote, “Showing of middle finder is not only offensive but a highly belligerent, invasive, obscene, lewd gesture.”
How exactly is an emoji in violation of the Indian Penal Code? Well, according to Singh: “As per the Indian Penal Code Sections 354 and 509, it is an offence to show obscene, lewd, offensive gestures to women. Use of a lewd, offensive, obscene gesture by anyone is hereby illegal also as aforesaid. As per Section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act, 1994, showing of the middle finger is also an offence in Ireland.”
Singh further added: “By offering to use middle finger emoji in your app, you [WhatsApp Inc] are directly abetting the use of offensive, lewd, obscene gesture.”
Singh has thusly requested that the middle finger emoji be removed from WhatsApp within 15 days from the date of the present legal notice, or risk facing civil or criminal cases.
Needless to say, when WhatsApp introduced the middle finger emoji back in 2015, it is unlikely they foresaw an angry Indian man shaking is fists at the company and experiencing an unreal amount of offence.
In 2005, a Law Commission report claimed that a national law to prevent vexatious litigation is important for “public good” because such a law would impose restrictions on a “vexatious” person’s “access to justice”. The same report also pointed out that even though there has been a constant demand from courts to dissuade frivolous petitions by increasing the court fee, a higher fee would not really work as an effective solution – on the contrary, it could also end up dissuading genuine litigations, something that the Supreme court laid out in a suggestion in 2016, when it proposed parties to deposit Rs 50 lakh before a matter is heard in court.
One only ends up wondering if Singh found himself on the receiving end of such an emoji and if that is what triggered this legal notice.