Indian Politics: More Cartoons Out Of The Cupboard!

By -

The cartoon was first published in 1949. It was aesthetically done and genuinely humorous. Therefore, it was included in Indian textbooks meant for eleventh standard school students in 2006 to make education informative as well as enjoyable. After 63 years from first publication and 6 years from inclusion in textbooks the ‘issue’ of the cartoon rocked and disrupted the Indian Parliament on May 11, 2012. The reason or motivation seemed to be obvious—to embarrass the tottering ruling coalition further in light of impending General Elections of 2014.

The cartoon involved two all-time greats in Indian history. Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, popularly known as Babasaheb, donned the role of a real father of the Indian Constitution and fought tirelessly for the Dalits or the Untouchables or the oppressed all his life. Belonging to a backward caste of Maharashtra he struggled at every stage of his life to rise to eminence as a sociopolitical reformer, scholar-philosopher, writer-editor and a leader-politician. His immense contribution to the liberation of the Dalit communities from social discrimination made him almost a God or an Avatar (incarnation of God) for them particularly after his demise. His birth anniversary on April 14 and death anniversary on December 6 are huge events in Mumbai and other places of Maharashtra with millions offering prayers and respects. Dr. Ambedkar has also been posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1990—the highest civilian honor in India. 

The second personality involved in the cartoon was Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru—the first Prime Minister of India and one of the path-breakers for the emergence of India as a modern developing nation. 




And not the least, the cartoonist Shankar Pillai has also been recognized as the father of political cartooning in India and he was the recipient of the second highest civilian honor of India. 

Now, the said cartoon draws a picture of Dr. Ambedkar—the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution-- sitting on a lump named ‘Constitution’ kept on the back of a snail brandishing a whip. Behind him stands Jawaharlal Nehru—the then Prime Minister—in action with a whip too. Apparently, both are trying to speed up the process of drafting that for a country like India was the most challenging job, because it had to satisfy all ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse states and people of independent India.  The humor was pulsating as the helplessness was vivid. Both Ambedkar and Nehru must have enjoyed it a lot at that time. 

But at the present time all interpretations had to go political. ‘Nehru whipping Ambedkar!’, ‘Insult to Babasaheb!’, ‘Babasaheb cannot sit in front of a whipping Nehru!’, ‘Insult to all Dalits of India!’ and so on cutting across all opposition political parties of India. The panicky government had to announce the immediate withdrawal of the concerned textbooks from markets and removal of the cartoon next.

Basic questions never got answered. Why opposition now and not in 1949 or after 2006? What were the ‘affected’ or ‘insulted’ parties doing all the while? Was it a reaction to the ouster of Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh? A dress rehearsal for General Elections 2014?  Or taking on a cue from the merciless Mamata’s tirade against creative intellectuals and cartoonists?  As for the larger Dalit masses political leadership and influence had been the mainstay of their existence in recent years and basically, maybe, they could never accept the spectacle of their God sitting in front of a whipping ‘master’.

The oft repeated zero tolerance for terror or corruption has been increasingly infiltrating creative fields in India which is ominous!

Taking intolerance to a shocking level one breakaway group of the Republican Party of India today attacked and vandalized the office of Suhas Palshikar in Pune, Maharashtra. Palshikar was one of the two advisers to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) who resigned yesterday over the controversy. NCERT is the apex body of school education in India and these two advisers were in the Textbook Developing Committee. Palshikar and his colleague maintained that the controversy was totally unnecessary and that there was no insult to Babasaheb Ambedkar. There should have been a nationwide debate on this issue concerning a legendary personality for whom they themselves had the highest respect, they added.

Reactions:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Few Concerns As India Cross 9 Million COVID-19 Cases!

By -
Image
India has crossed the 9 million COVID-19 cases mark today, taking 22 days for the last million increase as against 19 days for the previous millon cases. The recovery rate has almost reached 94% with active cases falling below 4,50,000. A few days back daily new cases fell below the 30,000 mark that was consistent only for two days, and new additions had again picked up. In the last twenty four hours total number of new cases was at 45, 882. Total deaths that started falling below 500 also picked up, and for the last twenty four hours 584 Coronavirus patients had died which is a bit worrying despite the fatality rate consistently at around 1.5%.  The increased numbers of daily new cases and daily deaths are largely due to record spikes in Delhi and high-volume numbers in Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Haryana. In states like Gujarat, Manipur and a few others the renewed spikes have raised a concern. In
Read more

India Vs Australia: Cricket New Normal, COVID Stress, Pink Ball And Expectations!

By -
Image
  Photo: rediff.com India started their tour of Australia in 2018-19 too from November 2018 to January 2019, and created history by becoming first Asian cricket team to beat Australia in a Test Series in Australia. They also became only the second team of the world to beat Australia in Australia in both the formats of ODI and Test. The first test of that series too started in Adelaide in December and in that cracker of a match India won by 31 runs, one of their slenderest of victory margins. Australia won the second test in Perth by 146 runs, and India sealed the series 2-1 by winning the third test in Melbourne by 137 runs with the last match ending in a draw in Sydney. Then they went on to win the ODI Series 2-1 too. Under Australia’s split captaincy regime for different formats Aussie wicket keeper Tim Paine was the captain in the Test series and Aaron Finch captained the Aussies in the ODI and T201 formats, and they met Virat Kohli as the all-format Indian skipper. The rivalry rema
Read more

Pandemic Response: Taking Precaution Is Not Out Of Fear Or Negativity!

By -
Image
  Apart from the still fluctuating or increasing number of people testing COVID-19 positive across the Indian states, primarily Delhi and a few others, there has also been a growth of a sense of ‘false positivity’ in the response of the people to the pandemic. We had seen in an earlier piece about that surge of defiance in citizens to celebrate Diwali the usual normal way. This ‘surge of defiance’ is somewhat related to what we have said about that sense of false positivity. After more than eight months of paying subservience to the sticky virus people now seem to say and act accordingly, ‘No, enough is enough! No more slavery to the goddamned virus! We’ll do now whatever we feel like. We are least likely to be infected as we are positive about it, and if we do get infected, let it be!’   If fellow citizens around them insist on observing the norms like at least wearing masks they rule it out scornfully, ‘Don’t be scared, guys! Be positive, nothing will happen to you!’ If an elder
Read more

Bihar Maha Bitterness: Why Board And Then Blame The Sinking Ship!

By -
Image
  After riding on a palpable anti-incumbency wave and the predictions of clear victory by all of the exit polls the ultimate narrow defeat of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) in the Bihar Assembly Elections-2020 is bound to cause huge disappointment and bitterness. Unable to accept defeat the leaders of the RJD first started attacking the Election Commission on a variety of alleged anomalies in counting, and then picked out the main alliance partner, the Indian National Congress (INC), for letting them down. A prominent RJD leader attacked Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi for their alleged callousness towards the election. The leader further alleged that they did not come for the election campaigns attending a very few rallies, but were only interested in having picnics. He also questioned the internal management of the INC and its lack of introspection.   Having said that, we must examine the underlying factors. The RJD under the leade
Read more

The COVID-19 Vaccine Countdown!

By -
Image
  Experts say that while the novel Coronavirus that hit planet earth in December 2019 created an unprecedented crisis for humankind the response to it by researchers, medical scientists and pharmaceutical companies in trying to discover a vaccine is also unprecedented. Under normal circumstances the process of discovering, testing and producing a vaccine takes from 5 years to 10 years thanks to the high failure rate associated with it. Therefore, the probability of having an effective COVID-19 vaccine within a year of the pandemic invasion is incredible news that speaks volumes about the non-stop efforts, dedication, round-the-clock supervision, utilization of special funds and global coordination put into it. As per the World Health Organization, at present there are nearly 200 vaccine candidates out of which 44 are in various stages of human clinical trials, and a few are about to be approved by the regulators. This would indeed be another crowing glory of the human quest should a sa
Read more

"Bura Mat Suno...Bura Mat Dekho..."!

By -
Image
Long back Mahatma Gandhi advised us ‘Do not listen to bad, do not see bad and do not speak bad’ ( "Bura Mat Suno..Bura Mat Dekho...Bura Mat Kaho" !). Now in modern hyper competitive times we are helpless about the first two don’ts. And persistent exposure to the first two makes us lose the third too! We cannot help but listen to or watch an endless stream of ‘bad’—all around us from home to the streets, in the newspapers and news channels, in the television serials and in the movies and at every act we have to do like walking praying jogging or driving—everyday and every step of our existence. Such continuous barrage of ‘bad’ is fast making us speak and utter a lot of ‘bad’ too. We are becoming doubtful and suspicious of everything around us and we are learning to blurt it out freely and openly. The main ‘bad’ drive comes from politics. We are hounded constantly by all sorts of stories being hammered into us forcing us to form our opinions or go on changing t
Read more

Self-Respect And Respecting Others!

By -
Image
We more or less understand the meaning of self-respect which is to keep or show respect to one’s own self. A self-respecting person is one who tends to justify his/her deeds or actions or reactions in the intrinsic belief that s/he cannot possibly do or say wrong things, and if s/he gets insulted by others in the process or is asked to do or comply with ridiculous tasks s/he gets mortally offended. Losing one’s self-respect is often the end of the world for a truly self-respecting individual. This, of course, differs from individual to individual depending on the individual’s perception about it and whether his/her sense of self-respect is genuine or cultivated or vain. To this point we will come at a later context. First, we must try our best to explain the syndrome of self-respect or self-esteem further.   How does self-respect come about? We have to be clear about one thing that we cannot possibly create self-respect on our own; supposing we can the questions are at which stage
Read more

Actor-Legend Soumitra Chatterjee Passes Away In Kolkata!

By -
Image
  Legendary actor Soumitra Chatterjee passed away in a Kolkata hospital today after fighting with COVID-19 for nearly one and half months. He was tested positive on the 6 th of October 2020 and was promptly admitted to a hospital considering his age and vulnerability. The actor was on and off ventilator support as he developed a range of other infections. Great hopes were generated when he tested negative on October 14; but his COVID-related complications dashed all expectations of his final recovery. He continued to be on life support, and despite the best efforts of the team of doctors we have lost one of the greatest actors of Indian Cinema. He was 85, but still had enough ammunition to surge ahead with his creative pursuits, encompassing a saga of over five decades in Bangla movies. But for the deadly pandemic virus!   Soumitra Chattopadhyay has been one of my all-time favorite actors of world cinema, and living in Assam, I began to realize his immense contribution to cinema o
Read more

The Decibels Of Desperation!

By -
Image
  Tiken has developed a gut feeling. That he is not going to win this time. He tries hard to get rid of that miserable feeling, but is not successful. He understands his other gut feeling. That he cannot afford to lose this. He has everything to lose if he does. In fact, Tiken had sounded a threat even before the event that he would leave the place in case the inhabitants stopped supporting him, and they would miss his prestigious presence sorely. Then, he muses, did he actually know about the wave for change in the air? Perhaps yes, perhaps not.   It is a huge housing society that Tiken lives in, with five wings from ‘A’ to ‘E’. Each wing has hundred flats most of which are occupied, either by owners or tenants. As the General Secretary of the Society’s Residents’ Association he has been enjoying immense powers in taking decisions or initiatives or desirable actions. He was elected in the last elections by a very narrow margin, but most of the members in his executive committee wo
Read more

Pandemic Response: Restive Public, Diwali Violations And Vaccine Solace!

By -
Image
  As the loud bursts of firecrackers reach a crescendo the discerning law-abiding citizens, particularly the elderly ones sticking to the stay-at-home doctrine, wonder loudly too, ‘What the heck is happening, and how?’ Yes, valid question: the state, one of many Indian states, imposed a complete ban on firecrackers and fireworks from 9 th November to 30 th November 2020 asking citizens to observe Diwali, the biggest festival of India, by lighting earthen or electric lamps only, in view of the pandemic that can accelerate again due to increased pollution. In the nation’s capital Delhi, apart from the complete government-ban the National Green Tribunal also totally prohibited use or sale of firecrackers making these punishable offences. Yet, on the Diwali night of 14 th November 2020 all caution ended up in smoke as most of the city folks celebrated with fireworks in brazen defiance. How they managed to get the abundant supplies of crackers and accessories is a question that is better
Read more