The following is excerpted from Sudhanva Deshpande’s Imposter: The Playful Subversions of Orijit Sen, published by LeftWord Books, 2026.Orijit Sen’s online works are political, humorous, witty, subversive, full of allusions, puns, and word play. They use the power of images created by mass media such as commercial or political advertising to question dominant narratives. Orijit seems to apply the dictum, ‘Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable’ – a statement attributed to many, including the underground British artist Banksy, but various internet fora suggest that this is likely originally by Cesar A. Cruz, an American activist and educator of Mexican origin.Orijit’s meme-like political artworks, put out on his social media handles, tend to go viral in a matter of hours. He creates them with astonishing speed; some of his works have taken as little as 15 minutes, while most take him about 30 to 45 minutes to make. These are the works that respond to the events unfolding around him, his personal take on them while he works on commissioned projects to earn a living. Imposter: The Playful Subversions of Orijit Sen, Sudhanva Deshpande, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2026.He creates his art almost exclusively on digital media now, but even earlier, when he worked on paper, the idea of ‘original’ held little value for him. To him the printed image was his final work. Even large installations, like his creations for Kochi Biennale and Serendipity Arts Festival, were all done on computer, printed out, fabricated, and assembled. Nothing of what the public saw was hand-drawn. The ‘Mapusa Mogi’ mural uses hand-drawn tiles, based on digital drawings by the artists.Alongside opposition to capitalism and consumerism, Orijit has been preoccupied with the rise of authoritarianism, majoritarianism, and fascist tendencies in India. While some of his online political artworks target the Congress party, and occasionally even the Left, the majority of his online political art has direct visual and textual references to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the political party it gave birth to, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well as the preeminent leader of that party, Narendra Modi, India’s current prime minister. He has also depicted other leaders of the Hindu right-wing and their associates, such as Amit Shah, currently India’s home minister, and the film star and member of parliament Kangana Ranaut.For Orijit, creating and disseminating art on social media is part of an ongoing process of dialogue – a back and forth – with his viewers. His online works were unsigned initially. Subsequently, Orijit created a logo for himself: the figure of a dice, with the letters O and S imprinted on the three visible sides. He did this when he found that his online works were being used in posters and other graphics without acknowledging him as the creator. On social media, when his works go viral and get shared again and again, they go on to different platforms, including X (previously Twitter) and others where he is not present. The work often gets completely separated from the artist. Orijit Sen’s artwork posted on social media. Photo: Instagram/orijitzen.While the act of ‘branding’ his works with a personal logo can be seen as antithetical to his anti-commercialisation stance, I believe it is motivated by a different impulse. In the first place, it is not for commercial gain. Orijit makes no money from it. Then there’s the form of the logo itself – the dice. Many of Orijit’s works, as I’ve noted above, refer directly to political organisations, parties, and leaders. Not only does he get trolled for these but he opens himself up to the risk of arrest and other forms of harassment by the state. That the risk is not trivial is evident in the fact that several critics of the ruling party and the government in power, including film and theatre artists, writers and visual artists, routinely face such harassment or have been incarcerated. So, every time Orijit publishes a new work on social media, he is rolling a metaphorical dice and tempting fate. By branding his works with his logo, he is owning up to them publicly. He knows that he enjoys almost every privilege our society has to offer. He is a male born in a dominant caste Hindu family; he is a part of the cultural and educational elite of the country; and he is a well-known artist with connections to others like him.India has seen numerous small and large protest movements in the recent past – students, farmers, Adivasis, women, workers, Dalits, minorities have all led agitations to assert constitutional principles, protect democracy, and fight for their rights. Orijit’s logo is a subtle, unspoken question: Will those with privilege, like himself, use their privilege in support of these movements? As the Günter Grass-quoting dog on an Orijit T-shirt says, ‘The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open’.Sudhanva Deshpande is a theatre director, actor, and writer with Jana Natya Manch, managing editor of LeftWord Books, and the author of Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi.