Parliament hurriedly intervened in the issue that called for more serious thought Renowned historian K.N. Panikkar on Wednesday said that the stand taken by Parliament in the controversy over a cartoon on B.R. Ambedkar was disturbing as it rather hurriedly intervened in an issue that called for more serious thought. “The members of Parliament have reacted with rare unanimity and an unwarranted sense of outrage to the cartoon included in a textbook...

-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...

-The Times of India The government has maintained that NCERT is an autonomous body. Well, if the insistence is correct, the cartoons which triggered a political storm should stay in the textbooks.  A month before the row over the cartoons erupted, leading to the decision to banish them, NCERT had defended their use in textbooks, even telling the National Commission for SCs that there was nothing offensive about the B R Ambedkar...

Parliament is now a body of fragile selves. They won’t draw a sword for liberty Is the controversy over the Ambedkar cartoon in the NCERT textbook a sign of a deeper intellectual and cultural malaise? The plot line is eerily familiar. One set of politicians raises, in this case falsely, the apprehension that a cartoon is offensive. There is a high-pitched debate. Members of an offended community accuse others of insensitivity...

-The Financial Express A group of well-known scholars has called on the government not to tamper with the contents of academic syllabi on “executive discretion” as was being done in the matter relating to a review of political cartoons in textbooks. A statement by Romila Thapar, Prabhat Patnaik, Zoya Hasan, Ram Rahman, Jayati Ghosh and Mushirul Hasan, among others, said they were concerned about HRD Minister Kapil Sibal’s statement that an ‘offensive’...