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New Delhi: In 1923,
iconic Bengali humorist Sukumar Ray described a curious race of
beings "who were scared to laugh". With the government forced to
apologise for a 1949 cartoon on Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar
after parliamentarians of all hues raised a massive ruckus, are
Indians becoming that humourless race?
The 63-year-old cartoon by the eminent Shankar - considered the
father of Indian political cartoonists who ran the highly regarded
Shankar's Weekly till it closed down during Indira Gandhi's
Emergency regime of 1975-77 - shows first prime minister Nehru
with a whip in his hand chasing Ambedkar, the architect of the
Indian constitution, who is on a snail. The uproar in parliament,
that began with protests by pro-Dalit parties, led to Human
Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal removing the sketch from
NCERT textbooks and an attack on the offices of NCERT advisor
Suhas Palshikar even though he had quit.
The controversy, posing the bigger question of removing political
cartoons from textbooks entirely points to a tiptoeing autocracy,
growing stupidity and joylessness in the Indian polity, say a
cross section of scholars, intellectuals and society watchers.
Former politician and schoolteacher M.L. Chattopadhyay says the
controversy is reminiscent of Ray's limerick "Ram Garurer Chana" -
children of the bird Ram Garuda who are not allowed to laugh...
and were always scared that someone was laughing.
Indians are probably losing the ability to laugh because of a
competitive and combative society, adds historian and writer
Mushirul Hasan.
"We have lost the inclination to laugh at the self. Unless you can
laugh at yourself, you cannot appreciate humour and wit," Hasan,
the author of the "Awadh Punch" and "Wit & Wisdom: Pickings from
the Parsee Punch", told IANS.
Laughter gives one confidence during "road rages when someone is
either angry with you or excluding you because of your gender or
for fact that you are a Dalit in a combative society...", Hasan
said.
Raking up a controversy over cartoons that were drawn over six
decades ago is stupidity, says Jatin Varma, founder and host of
Comic.Con, the country's largest annual comic assembly.
"It is most stupid to condemn them now when they (Shankar,
Ambedkar, Nehru) did not rake up the issue when they were alive.
The sad part is that the whole process of putting together an
NCERT text goes through various layers of bureaucratic screening,"
Varma told IANS.
Progressive intellectual and artist Ram Rahman said he did not buy
the argument that these cartoons are not appropriate for students.
"In this day and age, when more youngsters have access to the
digital media, to try and censor material like cartoons which have
appeared in the mass media is ridiculous," Rahman told IANS.
The progressive artist and arts activist said proscribing cartoons
which are a part of history and have been seen by millions is no
different from destroying the Babri Masjid.
"The motivations are exactly the same. It is an attempt to rewrite
history and also culture and tantamounts to an attack on the
freedom of the press. This is like bringing in the censorship of
the emergency through the back door… It is reminiscent of the
controversy surrounding M.F. Husain's art."
"After cartoons, what next?" he asked.
In a statement from the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat),
intellectuals like Romila Thapar, Zoya Hasan, Prabhat Patnaik,
Sudhanva Deshpande and M.K Raina said "appropriate procedures have
to be followed such as the setting up of a committee of academics
to look into each case".
"Summary judgments of the ministers concerned under political
pressures of various kinds do not determine the content of our
academic syllabi," they said.
The aggressive stand over the controversy was antithetical to the
democratic values cherished by Ambedkar.
The Foundation of Media Professionals, which condemned the move as
"retrograde step for democracy and does not augur well for what
may come", believes that irreverence should not be equated with
disrespect.
"Irreverence is not disrespect and cartoons are an important part
of social-political commentary. They are not threats to
democracy," the foundation said in a statement.
For the common person, protest is the only tool against the
government whip on political cartoons.
The road ahead is still uncharted on this one.
(Madhusree
Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
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