MLA:
Devadawson, Christel. “Indian Pictorial Satire in English.” Indian Writing in English Online, 5 Apr. 2022, https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/indian-pictorial-satire-in-english/.
Chicago:
Devadawson, Christel. “Indian Pictorial Satire in English.” Indian Writing in English Online. April 5, 2022. https://indianwritinginenglish.uohyd.ac.in/indian-pictorial-satire-in-english/.
Published on 5 Apr 2022.
Introduction
The essay that follows studies Indian graphic protest in English from independence until the present day. Unlike revolutionary France, India does not fling itself into wholesale political and philosophical upheaval. Nor does it have to contend with a new class of readers of print culture, as industrial England once had to do. Even the machinery of two-party democracy fails to catalyse this genre in India, as it does in the United States. Such developments are interesting because they serve as trigger-moments in the evolution of the genre. They give rise to new kinds of visual and textual literacy, as well as to fresh political and social expectations in those who create and read graphic dissent. Equivalents in India are less dramatic or definitive. That is why it is necessary to select a cut-off date carefully, so that territory and causality at any rate can intensify the core analytical value of the genre in this country. Independence reconfigures India’s geopolitical boundaries, and makes the nation as identifiable an entity as possible for graphic dissent to explore. The independence moment also replaces a colonial regime with parliamentary democracy, and thus serves as a useful starting-point for an inquiry into pictorial satire, a genre that keeps watch steadily over all forms of representative government. Where relevant however, the essay will engage with political and aesthetic lineages of thought that pre-date the formation of the Indian nation-state.
The essay falls into four sections. It begins with a preliminary literature-survey. The second section is a theme-based analysis of the content of pictorial satire. It looks at the way in which India and its neighbourhood travel out to test mutual boundaries after ’47. The third section complements the second, as it looks at how time sequences unravel, by travelling to the centre of India’s domestic issues. The concluding segment engages with the broad issues that emerge from pictorial protest with an eye to the future.
A mild caution though is necessary. The essay seeks to outline and examine the archive of pictorial protest, its possibilities and its constraints, rather than to examine the individual career of any cartoonist. To that extent, it is likely to be speculative rather than literal in its approach to the genre.
1 Literature-review
At the start of the twentieth century, Ernst Gombrich uses material from the Florentine Renaissance to outline the way in which caricature retains the need for physiognomic and psychological recognition of its subject that it derives from conventional portraiture. Gombrich contends that the genre breaks new ground when it ‘gives visual reality to the wishes and desires of the masses,’[i] by deliberate distortion of physical features to indicate folly or crime. David Low — an interwar cartoonist and autobiographer — tries to explain to his readers that the discipline requires him to be ‘an artist who draws politics, not a politician who draws pictures.’ [ii] Lawrence Streicher and Walter Coupe debate the value of this genre to the emerging discipline of Cultural Studies through the late 1960s with specific reference to the ‘deceptive laughter of the modern cartoonist.’ [iii] A later study of the rhetorical encoding of persuasion within editorial cartoons identifies the value of pictorial satire as being ‘its ability to tap the collective consciousness of readers.’[iv] Finally, the insistence that ‘the cultural values and social aspirations of both maker and audience,’ [v] domiciles the genre within Cultural Studies as it treats popular print culture as sources of social and historical documentation.
Within the narrower field of Indian graphic dissent Wit and Humour in colonial North India (2007) looks at the evolution of the Avadh Punch in the nineteenth century.[vi] Wit and Wisdom: Pickings from the Parsee Punch (2012) attempts a similar niche-study of a comparable journal for the Parsi community. [vii] The main theme of Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (2014) [viii] is the relationship between modernity and the evolution of pictorial protest. Out of Line: Cartoons, Caricature and Contemporary India (2014) analyses the relationship between history and visual politics that shapes graphic satire in post independent India. [ix] The central concern of No Laughing Matter: The Ambedkar Cartoons 1932-1956 (2019) [x] iss the continuing nature of caste-discrimination in the shaping of pictorial protest around the figure of Ambedkar immediately before and after independence.
2 Mapping space
A distinctive feature of pictorial protest on the Indian subcontinent is its response to the way in which nation-states journey beyond their boundaries. Even when the political barometer points toward war, the pictorial gauge indicates criticism that is usually sharp rather than visceral. Attempts to study the way in which it maps space therefore are likely to suggest the way in which an emerging India begins to think about itself in its engagement with its closest neighbours.
2.1 Testing the boundaries
A vivid illustration of the way in which graphic protest works is its study of the evolving relation between India and Pakistan. It begins by casting Pakistan almost as India’s alter ego, a place that is more worthy of study than of condemnation. R K Laxman (1921-2015), working on the Free Press Journal based in Bombay, draws attention to the plight of hapless Dalits trapped in Karachi in the aftermath Partition. As Hindus, they fear a communal backlash, and seek to take ship to Bombay. However, they find that (even when the Indian High Commission pays their fare) they cannot leave Pakistan. The Sind Maintenance of Public Safety Ordinance of 3 February 1948 seeks to retain sweepers and washer men in Pakistan. Laxman represents their plight. They can neither seek citizenship in India nor give up their enforced residence in Pakistan. Encaged with the dustpans, brooms and other implements of their trade, and guarded by an armed constable outside, they are no better than inhabitants of a zoo might be, with one difference. The Indian reader comes to visit them. The ironic caption ‘Traitors’ and the explanatory tagline encapsulate their story. ‘The Sind government arrested sixteen washermen and eight sweepers under the Sind Ordinance for trying to board a ship leaving Karachi. ‘[xi] Laxman fumbles as a draughtsman, but the shaft goes home. What seems like a micronarrative within the ongoing tragedy of 1947 for both India and Pakistan indicates the way in which graphic protest seeks to sensitise its first readers. It also serves as a pertinent reminder of people who fall through the gaps of recorded history for two nations because of their identity and location.
There are also shifting populations with less reputable stories behind them. Migrants from Pakistan enter Junagadh with a view to claiming it through resettlement. In a sequence of cartoons on the latter subject, Laxman draws attention to the influx of over eight hundred Pakistanis into the former princely state even while it seeks union with India. Laxman gives the reader a gormless young man in a Nehru cap, labelled the ‘Indian Union.’ (Kamath 49) A girl in gharara choli represents Junagadh, while another in salwar kameez represents Kashmir. They flank the young spark, seeking his protection. He has clearly no particular love for either woman, but perforce flings an arm around each of them as a young thug in a leopard skin, brandishing a sword and a scimitar in either hand, rushes up to them. To Laxman, Pakistan plays the role of ‘Cupid, in spite of himself,’ (Kamath 49) and comes off as a loutish loser. India, albeit reluctantly, claims both states. Similarly, Bal Thackeray (1926-2012), Laxman’s fellow-cartoonist on the Free Press Journal also points out the mockery of the boundaries of ’47. Thackeray’s caption, ‘It was no use kicking,’ (Kamath 144) reminds the reader that as with other states in the Deccan, a reluctant Nawab leads his hapless donkey labelled ‘Bhopal’ to sign the Instrument of Accession. Even in the face of public apathy, the newly independent nation takes time and effort to claim its own. From this perspective, India can afford — it believes — to remain just a little aloof from the neighbourhood.
This sense of mildly comic distance marks most pictorial satire around Pakistan. Far from degenerating into a jingoistic set of wartoons, graphic protest articulates a curious alternative to the claim that Pakistan can speak for ‘all Indian Muslims, in minority and majority provinces alike, and political geography ensured [the opposite].’ [xii] It indicates areas of interest, and leaves it at that. Perhaps this is because pictorial dissent senses a lack of pulsating emotion on the part of the peoples of India in this matter. Does a sense of political escapism animate the genre, or is there a more complicated answer to the problem?
This becomes important because a similar sense of comic dismissal continues well into the present day. Jug Suraiya (b 1946) and Ajit Ninan (b 1955) continue this line of civilized good humour when they create a panel that shows Musharraf autographing copies of his study of the Kargil War In the Line of Fire for a mixed line of readers. The queue includes random stereotypes such as a liberal scholar, a terrorist, an armed assassin, a cheerful homemaker and a junta leader. One tells the other, ‘It’s a real bestseller—they say it’s the greatest work of fiction since Gone with the Wind.’[xiii] Does a refusal to take armed conflict seriously translate into pacifism? This is hard to answer. A caption to a later panel in which snowmen take the place of soldiers defending Siachen reads, ‘I wish we’d thought of this years ago,’ (Suraiya & Ninan 133) It suggests the tragicomedy of war without carrying either a charge of political commitment or of disengaged liberalism. Graphic protest may record to multiple flashpoints in the ongoing saga of Indo-Pak relations but does not twist the knife. Should readers extend a similar amused tolerance of the genre, or should they demand more by way of ideological commitment? Perhaps the need to develop a counter-argument to the aggressive line taken by a populist medium such as television gives graphic protest on the subject of Pakistan a greater turning radius, as it were, than one might expect.
2.2 The New Exotic
It is otherwise with China. Pictorial dissent repeatedly stresses two points. The first is that China always invades India before starting a dialogue. The second is that India unfailingly misunderstands Chinese intentions. When Laxman comes to work on The Times of India, he deploys strong dark lines to contrast the lasso Chou en Lai prepares for Nehru on Indian soil with the ramshackle fence along the international border when the intrusions of 1957 occur. [xiv] Again, during the ‘57 elections, Nehru harangues Laxman’s Common Man — now stripped to a newspaper rag by heavy taxes — and hectors a brawling Congress while Chou looks over the mountains, waiting to seize the moment of Indian disunity to strike a blow. (Ketkar 36) Nehru’s electioneering formula ‘Beware, Unite, Sacrifice, Fight’) is eerily prophetic of the oncoming war with China in which India follows all these injunctions, only to lose disastrously.
Graphic satire however goes on to offer a curious explanation of India’s inability to read China correctly. During the 2008 meeting between Manmohan Singh and Hu Jintao the protagonists share a mischievous thought-bubble that regrets, ‘Can’t tell from his expression what he’s thinking — so difficult dealing with these inscrutable Orientals.’ (Suraiya & Ninan 136) Clearly, Orientalism takes a lot of killing. Even a brief moment of apostasy such as this reminds readers of the unthinking continuation of colonial discourse in the form of mimicry that is at once ‘resemblance and menace.’ [xv] Those in leadership positions seem automatically to think of themselves as Western administrators, trying to wrestle with the intractable East.
Strategically however, it is not enough to dismiss this as merely another legacy of colonization. Fresh thinking is essential As Navare’s representation of Narender Modi’s 2019 visit to Japan makes apparent, new alliances become necessary to prevail over old estrangements. Modi and his counterpart Shinzo Abe, partaking of a tea ceremony in kimonos, feel the fiery breath of the Chinese dragon at the window. They try to beat the heat with their parchment fans smiling grimly all the while. [xvi] Courtesy is as necessary as it is difficult. When handling China, pictorial protest never lets its guard down.
2.3 Troubled waters
In this way, graphic documentation offers an angled study of the nation, both when India travels through the neighbourhood, and when the neighbourhood visits. How does the aesthetic change when (for once) the political and natural boundaries of a neighbour coincide? Sri Lanka presents an unusual challenge to the Indian imagination, as it appears to be easier to read than it is. Shankar Pillai (1902-1989) features Nehru and his Ceylonese counterpart, SWRD Bandaranaike, in the role of elderly seraphs wielding olive branches at the Commonwealth Summit in London during the summer of 1956. Sri Lanka successfully demands the closure of British military bases on the island. Nehru and Bandaranaike absent themselves jointly from the round of defence talks in an effort to downscale military activities by the Commonwealth. [xvii]The marching squad led by Anthony Eden as the British Prime Minister deliberately go into an ‘Eyes left’ manoeuvre to avoid having to see the peace mongers. An unusually smug Nehru fails to see the scowl with which a grumpy Bandaranaike follows him. Unsurprisingly, the latter does not appreciate India taking the lead in a domestic concern of Sri Lanka.
India’s apparent ambition to play an interventionist role in island affairs continues to ratchet up the tension in the 1980s. The separatist movement seeking recognition for Eelam — the Tamil-majority areas in the north and east of the country— begins to feature in pictorial dissent. An unusually emotional cartoon by Sudhir Dar — usually known for his work on elections in his panel entitled ‘This is It!’ — features President J R Jayewardene loosing the dogs of war on a terrified Tamil community. In pursuit of a single cowering representative, the dogs storm up a coconut palm that bends dangerously under their weight. Should their quarry jump into the sea, a shiver of sharks awaits him. Dar labels the dogs, ‘Armed Forces,’ to substantiate the charge that the state rounds upon its own people to destroy them. [xviii] As O V Vijayan (1930-2005) points out, the conflicts in the developing world only injure people within this already-stricken arena. They are the product of the ongoing brutal class war, necessary only for ‘the mystique on which the ruling elites sustain themselves.’ [xix]The irony of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Jaffna is that it is the wretched middle term in an equation between an anti-Eelam movement in Sri Lanka, and a backlash in Tamil Nadu.
The cynicism of the situation intensifies when Navare appears to revisit the Dar panel almost twenty years later. Navare juxtaposes the Indian peninsula and the teardrop-island to rewrite Dar’s configuration. Instead of the Sri Lankan government hounding the Tamils, Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi — who alternate as Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu — berate Manmohan Singh and compel him to intercede on behalf of the Tamils. They propel him from a gun carriage (whose muzzle-loader arches exactly as Dar’s palm-tree once did) to land in Sri Lanka. Squashed between Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi is the much-enduring Salman Khurshid, the Indian External Affairs minister of the time. Dar’s panel bespeaks abject terror. Navare’s communicates brinksmanship. Navare’s Manmohan Singh needs all the virtuosity of a circus artiste to land in Colombo and not in Jaffna, which the Sri Lankan government places off-limits for him. The periscope of a Chinese submarine replaces Dar’s sharks, suggesting a more complex danger to both India and Sri Lanka. The movement from the world of Dar to that of Navare is analogous to India’s shift from amateurish goodwill to strategic survival. It also indicates the increasing professionalism of the genre developed possibly as a tactical response to India’s geopolitical skirmishes. If India learns to tackle its neighbours over the first seventy years of its existence while appearing fashionably disengaged, the graphic protest it generates follows suit. Does this enhanced suavity help the genre to articulate some hard truths, or hinder it from doing so?
3 Sequencing time
Readers of political philosophy who concur with the idea that ‘truth is the daughter of time, not of authority,’ [xx] may well find a good deal of supportive evidence in the way in which pictorial protest opens up some of the critical concerns of India after ’47. As a genre, it offers alternative perspectives. The first is prospective, and concerns the day-to-day investment that the artist makes while playing ‘opinion-moulding and opinion-reflecting roles.’[xxi] The second is retrospective. It involves the editorial or scholarly choices made by those who anthologise or study graphic dissent well after its first appearance. Can pictorial satire generate texts of continuing relevance that witness to historical contexts other than those that produce them? An analysis of recurrent concerns and of the tropes through which pictorial satire discusses them, should help answer this question.
3.1 The prospect of independence
Graphic dissent sometimes gives the freedom struggle short shrift. An early panel by Laxman features a conversation between two suburban neighbours during which one snaps at his talking parrot, ‘ Will you stop asking, “What is independence? What is independence?’” (Kamath 64) Laxman exploits this member of the cartoonist’s bestiary. Conventionally, a parrot that speaks must immediately suffer imprisonment, as its squawk is always one of protest. For that matter, when Abu perceives the Emergency as a threat to democracy, he places another mutinous parrot in a cage to squawk out the same cautionary tale as that told by Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity. ‘Work more, talk less.’ [xxii] The reiteration of formulae — at the dawn of independence as well as at its darkest hour — reminds readers that real debate is no more, and only a mockery of conversation persists.
The larger and more disturbing question — that runs alongside the evolution of the nation state — is whether the performance of democracy is any guarantee of its authenticity. Scepticism about the virtues of freedom is rife, even in the run-up to the independence moment, on account not only of partition, but also because of the acute shortages of food and other supplies. Laxman returns to this theme a little later, to explore the idea that independence on these terms runs counter to nature. In a devastating representation of the proposed Independence Bill as a monster with horns and tail come hot from hell, Laxman exposes the dangers ahead. Nehru tries desperately to buff its claws and Patel goes down on his knees to administer a last-minute pedicure to the brute. Mountbatten, Jinnah and Gandhi exclaim in horror the cloven tail of the beast that proves its infernal origin. In the distance, Attlee and Churchill (then Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons respectively) tell each other that nothing can alter the nature of the bill at this stage. Laxman castigates the situation. His caption, ‘Manicuring the Monster,’ dramatises his sardonic reading of the mockery of independence under the conditions proposed by the bill. When Thackeray handles the same subject, he too wonders how the government can deliver on the promises of independence in the face of acute shortages of essential supplies. Thackeray has B G Kher — the first Chief Minister of Bombay state — hand a salver without any food on it to an emaciated beggar labelled ‘the Indian people.’ (Kamath 139) Again, the hollowness of the injunction with which Thackeray captions his cartoon, ‘The head first, the stomach can wait,’ shows the criminal irresponsibility of handing out pious middle-class maxims to the wretched of the earth. Within the context of abject poverty, all claims of independence ring false. To perform the rituals of freedom is one thing, to deliver the real article is quite another.
3.2 Performing democracy
The idea that citizens need to remain vigilant to protect freedom and that it is not a one-time gift, comes across vividly when cartoonists track the emergence of fresh threats to an emergent nation-state. An early domestic difficulty that India encounters concerns the debate over the relative status to accord ‘Jana, Gana, Mana,’ and ‘Vande Mataram,’ in the choice of a national anthem. Shankar’s Nehru spins like a top as he conducts two orchestras simultaneously. (Shankar 28) His defiant response, ‘Please Yourselves,’ forms the caption to the cartoon, but scarcely addresses the problem. The Western orchestra includes Iyengar on the cello, Mathai, Ambedkar and Azad as a trio in the wind section. They play ‘Jana Gana Mana,’ while Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and B C Roy, resolutely sing ‘Vande Mataram.’ Again, twin ensemble-panels by Shankar mark India’s first Republic Day and testify to the herculean task before the new nation. The first takes the form of a tableau and has Nehru’s cabinet parade before a dumbfounded citizenry. Rajendra Prasad on the conch, Patel and Nehru on the sringa and Tandon on the dhol are among the leading musicians. (Shankar 33) The companion piece features a similar set of performers, this time as part of a bewildered reading-group as Tandon takes them through the Hindi translation of the phrase, ‘Sovereign Independent Republic.’ (Shankar 33) Despite the celebratory nature of the day, Maulana Azad hovers anxiously on the fringe in the first case, and storms angrily out of the session in the second. If a territory is open only to those who claim it, one might argue that communal exclusionism vitiates the claim of a free republic. Shankar does not pull his punches.
Laxman pushes the trope a little further. While Shankar’s cacophony betokens political diversity (that makes it impossible to hear), Laxman’s characters pound the drums when they do not wish to listen. For example, when JP undertakes his 1965 mission of reconciliation to Nagaland, a rebel hurls the taunt, ‘Talk, I am listening!’ at him, while working up a crescendo on his drum. (Ketkar 17) The ability to hear an oppositional voice — a core value of democracy — is clearly at a premium.
In general, the performativity of democracy makes it an attractive choice for later cartoonists as well. In Navare’s extended interpretation of democracy as a great Indian circus, the CBI is a caged tiger who can only mew like a tame cat at the corruption in government circles. The government functions as a human pyramid, poised on a tightrope between the law that it needs to preserve and the laws that it perpetually breaks. Young India, one of Navare’s recurrent mascots, has no option but to don a clown’s costume and dance the jig as the underworld dictates. (Navare 2013 98) Again, pictorial satire obeys the traditional injunction that the time to send in the clowns for some easy laughs is when things seem as though they cannot deteriorate further. Moreover, the clown sometimes pays a heavy price to don the cap and bells. A common citizen may be a victim, as in the example just mentioned, but if a minister chooses to cast himself as a buffoon, the costume calls him to account. As the 2014 elections approach, Navare reminds his readers that the contrast is between ‘the untried piper and the bragpiper.’ (Navare 2013, 110) The first is Rahul Gandhi, who can do little more than blow a child’s whistle. The second is Narender Modi who plays a veritable orchestra of instruments on his own, especially the windy bagpipes to which he clings. Freedom is hostage to its unsuitable guardians. The deployment of the trope of performance — orchestra or circus — signals the black comedy of a failing democracy.
3.3 Difficulties of citizenship
To go down this road much further though will suggest that graphic dissent positions itself above the ruling class, to criticise hierarchy but not to alter it. If the genre is to remain effective as protest however, it needs to evolve a view that takes the women and men of India into account. Why does democracy come across as a show that implies careful scripting, timing, choreography and ventriloquism? When pictorial protest pushes itself to look for an answer to this question, it acquires an essential edge. Broadly speaking, it offers three kinds of response. Vijayan theorises the major crisis that other cartoonists represent. A heavily centrist government seems not to care to relate to vast swathes of Indians — owing to their poverty, region or illiteracy — except to treat them as potential threats to law and order. The government does not to find out why anyone should break the peace, but punishes any uprising instantly. As an atypically brutal cartoon by Laxman suggests, the government of India follows the colonial lead in this matter. A rascally minister displays a set of sketches to a visitor with a leer and a swagger. He explains ‘That’s the scent of lathi-charge on the day [the] “Quit India” call was given! This scene of lathi-charge is 45 years later!’ (Ketkar 83) The same brutalizing distance that made colonial governance disregard the governed now leads a parliamentary democracy to ignore its own people. Again, when Vijayan excoriates the failure of the government to manage the worst drought in independent India (in the late ‘70s) he spells out the word ‘Bengal’ in skulls. (Vijayan 112) As a young girl covers her face and cries, readers recall that the Bengal famine of 1943 — exacerbated by a breakdown in British policy rather than by natural causes — is the only parallel in national nightmare that comes to mind. Administrative failure in both cases arises out of a collapsed relationship between the governing and the governed classes; characteristic of a colonial regime but unforgivable in a parliamentary system. That is why pictorial satire invariably dramatizes the performance of democracy, not its reality. Neo-colonialism makes it impossible to deliver on the basics of democracy. As Vijayan remarks, ‘The tryst with destiny the Indian ruling classes were looking forward to, it would appear in retrospect, was not a momentous encounter with the … pathologically undernourished… but with a pleasanter destiny, with palaces and mansions of state…’ [xxiii]
Indeed, if one conceptualises democracy only along lines of party politics, it would seem to exacerbate matters even further. As a Pulse cartoon of 29 September 2020 indicates, partisan attitudes damage the farmers’ agitation. A Youth Congress worker sets fire to a tractor on Rajpath, within shouting distance of Parliament and gloats, ‘I have a tractor to fire,’ (Pulse) even as a poor and angry farmer with his brace of cattle snaps, ‘I have a chulha [earthen oven] to fire!’[xxiv] Paradoxically, in a democracy, protest or its performance is accessible only to those who can treat an expensive tractor as just another token of cynicism. The poor — having only the most meagre equipment — cannot protest, as they struggle to put a meal on the stove. If governance is at a premium, so is citizenship. The bleakness of independence in retrospect certainly suggests that ‘citizenship is withering away.’ (Ramnathaiyer & Todd 209)Pictorial satire shows its readers that all too often, the peoples of India figure only as statistics, when they vote, and when they die. The grim details are clear, but the larger narrative into which they dovetail bears further scrutiny.
4 The big picture
4.1 Representing caste
Inscribed inequalities stand out in all their ferocity when graphic dissent analyses the representation, deployment and mobility of caste as a critical category in contemporary India. An early but decisive moment in this matter is the division of opinion on the 1946 Cabinet Mission plan for Indian independence, drafted by Pethick Lawrence and Stafford Cripps during Wavell’s tenure as Viceroy. Ambedkar insisted on separate electorates to protect the interests of Scheduled Caste voters and candidates and Gandhi — who claimed to speak for the Scheduled Castes — opposed this. The Mission failed, largely because of the inability of the Congress and the Muslim League to work out a common response. Public opinion was critical of the Cabinet Mission, as also of the failure of Indian leaders to cobble together a workable alternative. A cartoon by Vasu Pillai for The Pioneer of 6 June 1946 has an impeccably dressed Ambedkar taking a last look at himself in the mirror, only to see a hag-ridden Jinnah looking back at him while shaking a menacing fist. (Sundar 136) Vasu’s Ambedkar looks bewildered. The idea that his insistence on separate electorates might seem to the public mind to be in the least similar to Jinnah’s demand for separate representation for Muslims takes him by surprise.
More contentiously, when going through pre-independence representations of Ambedkar, it is necessary to remember that he functions as a political leader in his own right, who tackles many issues. As a result, attacks on his iconicity may not always centre on caste. An early panel by Laxman for the Free Press Journal entitled ‘Balance of Power,’ has Ambedkar stretching out on a ‘fence of opportunism,’ as both the Congress and the Socialists extend invitations to power to him. (Ketkar 67) The cartoon is a timely reminder for readers today that the genre shows no quarter and asks for none. It is politically sensitive rather than politically correct, and draws attention to the way in which a crusade may remain essential and worthwhile even when the value of individual leaders is subject to review. Conversely, public opinion across the political spectrum realises that Ambedkar’s work is of continuing value. Thackeray splashes ‘Untouchability’ as the blot across the escutcheon of the preamble to the Constitution even while a young ‘Mother India’ looks on in angry dismay. (Ketkar 148) Caste-related discrimination repeatedly travesties parliamentary democracy.
Indeed, the allegation that a demand for the protection of the rights of Dalit communities is a threat to national unity continues well after ’47. Shankar’s representation of the Sardarnagar Congress in The Hindustan Times of 8 January 1961 has Nehru anxiously looking at a bottle of glue, while each of his colleagues — including Pant, Shastri and Jagjivan Ram – carry similar nostrums. (Shankar 311) A shattered statue captioned ‘Unity of India’ — intended to recall the cave-sculptures of Gautama Buddha — lies at their feet. The tagline ‘The Congress of Sardarnagar firmly resolved to put an end to “forces of dissolution” like casteism, communalism and parochialism,’ points to an unresolved issue. How can one campaign for the annihilation of caste — which entails discussing its divisions — and escape the brand of being anti-national?
Abu explains more clearly how caste gives democracy the lie. In the run-up to the 1974 state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, he indicates the polling-box with a gigantic arrow that says, ‘Vote your caste here.’ (Abu 22.2.74) ‘The gap between the electoral wishes and the electoral outcome,’ [xxv]owing to the collision in caste-loyalties — whether related to income, occupation or religion — vitiates this campaign. It lives on as a relatively early byword for voting-patterns skewed by caste affiliations.
Vijayan explains the way in which caste and political arithmetic relate to each other. He points out that caste makes nonsense of attempts to cobble together a coalition or any kind of electoral alliance as popular sentiment instantly seizes on what it can recognize rather than what it needs to test. When Vijayan’s Vajpayee from the BJP heads toward the Lok Dal office, he hears a derisive call. ‘I suppose there are problems, Sir. It’s after all a religion trying to infiltrate a caste…’ (Vijayan 50) It is not so much a matter of agricultural socialism getting together with professional centre-right forces as it is of traditional caste-orthodoxies shattering newer political alliances. As Vijayan points out, the crippling hold of the past reduces the ability of pictorial protest to create and analyse an emerging political culture. ‘The cartoon is an attribute of democracy but mine is a precarious island democracy whose shores are being licked up by erratic waters all the while. On this insecure perch, do you expect to laugh — or cry? (Ramnathaiyer & Todd 50) Graphic protest handles this question by studying the attendant perils of the situation. The entitlement that caste-based reservations or affirmative action seems to promote is the target of a small but significant sequence from Suraiya and Ninan. Perhaps the most disturbing panel is that which moves readers to consider the developing relationship between caste and entitlement. In the heart of the jungle stands a thatched hut flying the Red Cross flag. (Suraiya & Ninan 91) A man wearing a doctor’s coat and stethoscope leans against a curious signboard. Having cancelled out the term ‘witch,’ and retained the term ‘doctor,’ he brims over with confidence. Two men in tribal attire walk past him. One anxiously tells the other, ‘I’d never go to him — I believe he’s from the OBC quota.’ The panel focuses on the dangers of reservation, but the question that remains is, for whom are these problematic? Difficulties of admission in good medical colleges (for example) confront students from the general category. Alternatively, it might remind the reader of how difficult it is for medical students from the reserved category to get potential patients to respect them or to come to them for treatment. Pictorial dissent is not always on the side of the angels. It has the potential though, more than most other visual genres, to keep the conscience of the nation, on issues like caste-discrimination even if it appears sometimes to be dormant or beleaguered.
4.2 Beyond the pale
Can graphic protest rise above the level of chronicle of record and reach that of visual advocacy by pushing for a more robust and healthy society? It meticulously documents the extent to which the obscurantism of the past retards social progress. In the National Herald of 26 February 1949, Bireshwar conjures up a nightmarish figure captioned ‘Hindu society,’ that shakes a menacing fist at Ambedkar and hollers ‘Get out!’ (Sundar 203) Nothing daunted, Ambedkar advances steadily, leash in hand, to restrain such reactionary forces by regulating Hindu personal law in the fields of marriage, succession, adoption and maintenance. Orthodoxies of the past seek to strangle the nation at its birth. Laxman in The Times of India for 4 December 1949 depicts a Nehru who is appalled at the way in which an aggressive old ascetic captioned Anti-Hindu Code Bill enjoys his bed of nails. The latter rejects a proffered mattress by saying, ‘None of your newfangled ideas here, my dear man!’ [xxvi] A bawling baby, ‘New India,’ in the grip of the sage, bawls his head off, but to no avail. Nearly forty years down the road Laxman revisits the way in which obscurantism continues to hold the nation in its grip. The Times of India for 27 September 1987 has the Common Man explaining the Roop Kanwar case to a perplexed Rajiv Gandhi in this way. ( Martyris 99) He gestures to a tombstone that lists multiple evils like sati, dowry, caste and child marriage — many of the evils that the Hindu Code Bill sought to address — as ‘buried decades ago.’ Even as they watch, ghoulish figures emerge from beneath the headstone, and the Common Man says, ‘They [the social evils listed above] keep coming out because they have political influence I’m told…’
Nor does the genre target only the ruling class. It makes it plain that apathetic citizens are also responsible for the way in which public behaviour spirals readily down into barbarism. To this extent graphic satire certainly goes beyond documentation as it tries to jolt the public conscience into action. While covering the difficulty of obtaining justice in the Jessica Lal case, Suraiya and Ninan are scathing about the way in which crucial eyewitnesses refuse to testify for fear of reprisal. (Suraiya & Ninan 68) They hoist Gandhi’s monkeys (who see, hear and speak no evil) atop a coffin that carries the victim’s photograph and tributary candles. The tagline reads ‘They’ve been renamed from “The Three Wise Monkeys” to “Hostile Witnesses.” Such representations fall into the category of lawtoons: pictorial protest that draws attention to turning points in legal history. They go beyond the need to seek justice to push for the need to do the right thing for and within civil society.
The difficulty with this kind of work however, is that while it can raise public awareness, it seems impossible to tip it forward into action. Navare has a significant body of work on the need to restructure society so that women and children — who particularly need the protection of the law — do not continually fall victim to crime. His sequence on the Nirbhaya case focuses on the unmitigated horror of the December 2012 gang rape, and on the need to remind India that its attitude to women is cruelly palaeolithic. Navare plays off one kind of ensemble panel against another. One cluster relates to the individual and climaxes with the hero’s welcome that all Indian icons (including Gandhi, Nehru and Bose) accord her in heaven. (Navare 2013 11) The other relates to the brutality of apparently civil society. It climaxes with two cave dwellers — one labelled ‘rape’ and the other ‘acid attacks’ — congratulating each other on the way they can now roam the streets unpunished, where they once lurked underground. (Navare 2014 75) As with Navare’s work on the changing status of Section 377 though, it is clear that vulnerable sections of society remain at the mercy of a law that reflects mediaeval attitudes in contemporary times. A dinosaur would be quite at home in the India of today, argues a blindfolded Justice-figure, and so a new Neanderthal Age comes into existence. (Navare 2014 178) Lawtoons can speculate creatively on the gaps in the system, and educate the conscience of civil society on a range of vulnerabilities. At this point however, their role in visual advocacy ends. They may castigate the present but cannot (by definition) open into an idealised future.
4.3 Alternative heroisms
The heartbeat of graphic protest throbs through the focalizer: the character through which it argues its case and projects its point of view. The focalizer occupies a contested space between public and private space, and articulates a perspective that owes something to both regions. Shankar’s Nehru for example is not India’s first Prime Minister but an individual who relentlessly fashions himself into a position of a stylish and stylized witness. The complexities of the emerging nation come across to the reader through his gaze of intelligent bewilderment. When Nehru comments on the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ predicament unfolding in Kashmir at a press conference of 24 August 1950, Shankar does not merely recast the crisis in this light. (Shankar 51) He also has Nehru look at Sheikh Abdullah’s impressionistic splashes of paint on a dark canvas in complete incomprehension, and confess ‘I am slightly confused myself,’ in connection with ‘The Kashmir Picture.’ (Shankar 121) Laxman in his turn seems to communicate with the reader through the troubled silences of the Common Man while retaining a painterly and self-reflexive relationship with him. An unusually jolly Common Man — complete with brush, palette and easel — once portrays a diffident Laxman (Ketkar 1). Conversely, an angry Common Man complains of his creator, ‘He says this subject [dynastic politics] has become too ridiculous for a cartoon so he is not drawing one.’ (Ketkar121) Vijayan constructs a father-and-son duo to communicate the plight of the rural poor. As he expostulates, ‘My child is real. He sits out there, outside the unreal city, below the poverty line… as his mother feeds him the boiled roots of grass.’ (Vijayan 2) As a rule though, focalizers tend to share something of the appearance or experience of their creators. Maya Kamath and Manjula Padmanabhan sail a little close to self-portraiture in their representations of thoughtful women looking at an India that is beginning to live through its troubled middle class. Navare gives his readers a perspective shared between Zero the donkey, and Tuktuk a little girl who battles poverty, crime and illiteracy. They seem pitiful at first glance, but unfailingly use the tagline to show up the powerful in all their folly and criminality.
On what terms then can graphic satire stretch itself to represent India? In terms of representational idiom, it is always possible for the genre to create and sustain a community of its own. Mario Miranda (1926-2011) gave the readers of The Illustrated Weekly of India a sense of what life could be like in small, self-contained units. These included neighbourhoods such as a Bombay chawl, or suburban office. At present, ‘Chari,’ or Satyanarayana Govind is at work on a graphic documentation of the South Indian families of Delhi, based on family archives. Beyond this however, if pictorial protest is to push for a more just and equitable society and take on itself the mantle of visual advocacy, it needs to galvanise its characters and its readers with a similar purpose through a kind of selective scepticism. The nightmare of grim reality and the dreamscape of wish-fulfilment confront their readers. For example, Navare’s Modi leaves his easel and charges into the desert with the implements of a construction-worker saying ‘…and now to make the landscape look like my painting!’ (Navare 2014 157) Graphic protest stops on the cusp of this moment where possibility, irony and delusion meet. To go further would be to take the landscape for a painting, or more disturbingly, for a cartoon.
Works Cited
Abraham, Abu. The Games of Emergency, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977.
Bhabha, Homi ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,’ October, vol 20 (Spring 1984, 125-133.
Caswell, Lucy Shelton. ‘Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons,’ American Journalism 21(2) 13-45, American Journalism Historians Association, 2004
Coupe, W A, Observations on a Theory of Political Caricature,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol 11, no 1 (January 1969) 79-81. 80
DeSousa, Michael A and Martin J Medhurst. ‘Political Cartoons and American Culture: Significant Symbols of Campaign, 1980,’ Studies in Visual Communication, vol 8, Issue 1, Winter 1982, 84-97.
Devadawson, Christel R . Out of Line: Cartoons, Caricature and Contemporary India, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014.
Gombrich, E H. ‘Art and Propaganda,’ The Listener, 7 December 1939
Hasan, Mushirul. Wit and Humour in Colonial North India, Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2007.
— . Wit and Wisdom: Pickings from the Parsee Punch, Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2012.
Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 rpt 1994.
Khanduri, Ritu Gairola. Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Ketkar, Kumar Fifty Years of Independence Through the Eyes of R K Laxman, Mumbai: The Times of India, 1999.
Kamath, M V. (ed) Laughter Lines: The Cartoon Craft of R K Laxman and Bal Thackeray, Mumbai: Business Publications, 1999
Low, David. Low’s Autobiography, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957.
Maidment, Brian. Reading Popular Prints 1790-1870 2nd edn London: Manchester U P 2001.
Martyris, Nina. Laxman Rekhas, Mumbai: Bennet & Coleman, 2005
Singh, V B ‘Changing Pattern of Inter-Party Competition in Uttar Pradesh: An Analysis of the 1974 Election,’ Economic and Political Weekly, August 1974, vol 9 No 32/34, 1421, 1423-1428
Streicher, Lawrence A. ‘On a Theory of Political Caricature,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol 9, no 4 (July 1967), 427-445. 429.
Sundar, Unnamati Syama. No Laughing Matter: The Ambedkar Cartoons 1932-1956, Delhi: Navayana, 2019.
Ramnathaiyer Sundar, and Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Tragic Idiom: O V VIjayan’s Cartoons and Notes on India, Kottayam: D C Books, 2007.
Vijayan, O V A Cartoonist Remembers, Delhi: Rupa, 2002.
Notes
[i] E H Gombrich, ‘Art and Propaganda,’ The Listener, 7 December 1939, 1118 – 1120, 1118.
[ii]Low’s Autobiography, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, 155.
[iii] Observations on a Theory of Political Caricature,’ W A Coupe, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol 11, no 1 (January 1969) 79-81. 80. Coupe’s essay is a response to Lawrence H Streicher, ‘On a Theory of Political Caricature,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol 9, no 4 (July 1967)s 427-445. 429.
[iv] Michael A DeSousa and Martin J Medhurst, ‘Political Cartoons and American Culture: Significant Symbols of Campaign, 1980,’ Studies in Visual Communication, vol 8, Issue 1, Winter 1982, 84-97, 86.
[v]
Brian Maidment, Reading Popular Prints 1790-1870 2nd edn London: Manchester U P 2001, 13.
[vi] Mushirul Hasan, Wit and Humour in Colonial North India, Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2007.
[vii] Mushirul Hasan, Wit and Wisdom: Pickings from the Parsee Punch, Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2012.
[viii] Ritu Gairola Khanduri, Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
[ix] Christel R Devadawson, Out of Line: Cartoons, Caricature and Contemporary India, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014.
[x] Unnamati Syama Sundar, No Laughing Matter: The Ambedkar Cartoons 1932-1956, Delhi: Navayana, 2019.
[xi] M V Kamath (ed) Laughter Lines: The Cartoon Craft of R K Laxman and Bal Thackeray, Mumbai: Business Publications, 1999.
[xii] Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 rpt 1994, 242.
[xiii] Jug Suraiya and Ajit Ninan, Like That Only, Delhi: Bennet & Coleman, 2007, 121.
[xiv] Kumar Ketkar, Fifty Years of Independence Through the Eyes of R K Laxman, Mumbai: The Times of India, 1999, 35
[xv] Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,’ October, vol 20 (Spring 1984, 125-133, 129.
[xvi] Shreyas Navare, The Politickle Pickle vol 2, Noida: Collins, 2014, 146.
[xvii] K Shankar Pillai, Don’t Spare Me, Shankar! 1983, rpt Delhi: Children’s Book Trust, 2002, 187.
[xviii] Sudhir Dar, The Hindustan Times April 7 1986 https://sangam.sangam.org/taraki/articles.2006/11-06_JR_Cartoons.php?uid=2040/ accessed 11/10/2021
[xix] O V Vijayan, A Cartoonist Remembers, Delhi: Rupa 2002, 73
[xx] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620 (ed) Joseph Devey, New York: Collier & Son, 1911, 61.
[xxi] Lucy Shelton Caswell, ‘Drawing Swords: War in American Editorial Cartoons,’ American Journalism 21(2) 13-45, American Journalism Historians Association, 2004, 20.
[xxii] Abu Abraham, The Games of Emergency, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977 (14.7.75) As the book is not paginated, the date of the cartoon is used for purposes of reference.
[xxiii] Sundar Ramnathaiyer and Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Tragic Idiom: O V VIjayan’s Cartoons and Notes on India, Kottayam: D C Books, 2007, 33.
[xxiv] https://mobile.twitter.com/thepulseindia/`3`0961422241833026?lang=da accessed 11/10/2021
[xxv] V B Singh, ‘ Changing Pattern of Inter-Party Competition in Uttar Pradesh: An Analysis of the 1974 Election,’ Economic and Political Weekly, August 1974, vol 9 No 32/34, 1421+1423-1428, 1428.
[xxvi] Nina Martyris, Laxman Rekhas, Mumbai: Bennet & Coleman, 2005, 7.
