The cartoon controversy shows the enthusiasm of our political class to create a quiescent, question-less environment The year was 1967. Vaikkom Muhammad Basheer had published a story — in Malayalam, of course — called Oru Bhagavad Gitayum Kure Mulakalum (A Bhagavad Gita and a Few Breasts). This Muslim was having good fun, writing about getting hold of a new edition of the Gita and watching a procession of half-naked nubile Nair...

The row over a cartoon featuring Dalit leader Ambedkar shows a lack of critical thinking in the Indian polity. The cartoon by Shankar Pillai that caused such pandemonium in the Indian Parliament on 11 May 2012 when various Dalit and non-Dalit members demanded its omission from a Class IX textbook was originally published in 1949. It depicts Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar with a whip riding a snail entitled ‘Constitution’...

The colonial government took a liberal view of the merciless lampooning that it received at the hands of cartoonists in the Indian press A cartoon is a written expression of the comic impulse, and the cartoonist is an artisan of nib and brush who puts down complex processes of reason and argument in drawings and pictures. His impact is that readers sit up, smile, frown, or simply laugh. In short, Cartoons...

At last, the real anxieties lurking behind what has come to be called the “Ambedkar cartoon” controversy are out in the open. It is hideously clear by now that MPs “uniting across parties” are acting as one only to protect themselves from public scrutiny, debate and criticism. It turns out, as some of us suspected all along, that the “sentiments” that have been “hurt” this time are the easily bruised...

-The Economic Times Even as noisy MPs continued to demand a ban on Cartoons of politicians in NCERT textbooks in Lok Sabha, a lone voice struck a different chord. National Conference MP from Baramulla Sharifullah Shariq said politicians should introspect instead of criticising the Cartoons. "Except in rare cases where a cartoon denigrates leader like Nehru or Ambedkar, why banish political Cartoons altogether ?" Shariq said. The NC leader said Kashmiri leaders, including...