India may have dented its image as a champion of press freedom after the anticorruption activist Aseem Trivedi was arrested in September for lampooning the Parliament in a cartoon, but, in fact, political satire has a long history in many parts of the country, especially in Kerala. No-holds-barred portraits of political leaders are daily fare on every local channel, and the targets of such shows even see it as an honor of sorts. Such tolerance for ridicule lies in the fact that mimicry has long been the staple of entertainment in Kerala. Most of the top movie stars in Malayalam-language cinema, also known as Mollywood, started their careers as mimicry artists at temple festivals and other...
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