Recent events in Parliament concerning a National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook use of a Shankar cartoon of Babasaheb Ambedkar have correctly drawn outrage and public debate. General outrage has also been correctly expressed at the attack on Suhas Palshikar's office in Pune - apparently for his role as chief advisor of the offending textbook. In his statement, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal has chosen to limit...

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 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...

-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...

-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...