-The Economic Times School textbooks will not feature any 'offensive' political cartoon, the government assured on Monday, days after a 1949 cartoon of Dalit icon Ambedkar in a political science text rocked Parliament. The government has ordered an inquiry to identify NCERT officials responsible for inclusion of the Ambedkar cartoon in the textbook, HRD minister Kapil Sibal said in the Lok Sabha. "I found that a number of cartoons were inappropriate...a review...

-The Indian Express Where are the tall leaders who could put an end to this experiment in censorship? The UPA government may have only been true to character when it keeled over at the first hint of political uproar against cartoons in NCERT textbooks. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal hurried to withdraw the book with the newly controversial Ambedkar cartoon, without a minimal attempt at debate, and Pranab Mukherjee said that books...

As cartoons, like all other images, are constantly subject to fresh interpretation, there is a need to set boundaries within which dissent must be tolerated; or else we run the risk of damaging the task of knowledge building Like many books, works of art, and articles that have been summarily withdrawn from public circulation, for different political reasons, and due to public pressure, the controversial 1949 cartoon by Shankar has been...

The Ambedkar cartoon has been misread. And this could just be the beginning Ever since the Ambedkar cartoon controversy erupted, I have not stopped wondering about the irony of the situation. The attempt, perhaps the first one in the national textbooks, to accord Babasaheb Ambedkar his due place as one of the founders of our republic, was being attacked for insulting him. Professor Suhas Palshikar, who has taught me to read...

-Kafila.org The uproar over what is being referred to as the ‘Ambedkar cartoon’ in the class XI textbook prepared by NCERT first began over a month ago, that is to say, almost six years after the books have been in circulation, been taught and received high praise for their lively style and a critical pedagogical approach (more on this below).  It was a political party – one of the factions of...