The grand old man of Indian cartooning RK Laxman has a delightful anecdote that embodies the charm of political cartooning. Soon after the 1962 Sino-Indian war, Laxman lampooned Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his much-maligned defence minister Krishna Menon. That evening, Laxman got a call from the prime minister’s office. Picking up the phone, he was petrified of being at the receiving end of Nehru’s ire. He need not have...
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In Ambedkar’s name-Harish S Wankhede
Row over cartoon demeans the Dalit movement in general and Ambedkar in particular The intellectual-rational capacity of the current brand of Congress leadership has always been in doubt. In the latest episode of fast-track community appeasement by banning a controversial Nehru-Ambedkar cartoon in an NCERT textbook, the ruling elites of our country hit a new low in their political opportunism. Kapil Sibal is, in general, not a popular figure among Dalits,...
More »Academics slam Sibal for cartoon ban in textbooks
-The Times of India Over a dozen academics, under the aegis of SAHMAT, issued a statement recently criticizing HRD minister Kapil Sibal's stand to withdraw the NCERT texts that contained the Ambedkar cartoon, saying the issue could not be treated like one of mere executive discretion. Signed by eminent academics, including Romila Thapar, Amitabh Kundu, Zoya Hasan, Gopal Guru, Prabhat Patnaik and M K Raina, the statement said, "Whatever be the merits...
More »‘Autonomous’ NCERT should retain toons
-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...
More »Please Sir, may I take a newspaper into my class?-Nivedita Menon
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...
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