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This story is from February 22, 2009

Tickling the Indian funny bone is a serious matter

The furore over President Obama as a chimpanzee in a US cartoon raises a key question: How does the Indian cartoonist tread the fine line between political correctness and creative freedom?
Tickling the Indian funny bone is a serious matter
Indian cartoonists often tread the thin line between propriety and a no-holds-barred representation of society. Some subjects are firmly off-limits ��� religion, community-based stereotypes and women politicians. One man's caricature is another man's demon, they say. Fellow cartoonists in America would agree. Just days ago, a row broke out in the US over a New York Post cartoon, which was seen as a racist denigration of President Barack Obama.
The row raises interesting questions in India, which is as culturally diverse as the US. How do our cartoonists negotiate the minefield of political correctness?
"Most of our political cartoons have shown politicians as apes," says Mario Miranda, one of India's best-loved cartoonists. "But humour is dying out in India. People take themselves too seriously, which makes them even funnier."
Cartoonist Unny adds that his craft needs to invert reality. Ravi Shankar, who gave up cartooning for writing, says cartoonists aren't supposed to be "receptionists but people with a deep understanding of politics and social mores."
Even so, Indian cartoonists often steer clear of stereotypes. Unny says stereotyping often backfires because it hurts the sentiments of a community. "The cartoon will then be used by vested interests, harming the cartoonist and jeopardising the message he wants to put across."
Most cartoonists agree that by its very nature, humour breaks all stereotypes. It can't be codified and bursts upon you when you least expect the punch line, says Unny. By this token, stereotypes don't work . Cartoonists insist stereotyping is low-brow and slapstick and best left to Bollywood.
Fear of the moral police has little to do with it either. Unny points out that "after the Mangalore pub incident, many cartoons came out in Karnataka, attacking the right-wing."

Cartoonist Sudhir Tailang recalls stereotyping the Hindu community in 1995 when there were ���miraculous' sightings of Ganesha idols drinking milk. "I drew a cartoon showing Ganesha drinking milk from a Mother Diary van, and the driver asking if he wanted ice-cream as the milk was over." The fallout was interesting. "While the Mother Diary chairman sent me two cartons of ice-cream, a woman called me three nights in a row at 2 am, threatening me with death."
Miranda remembers burning his fingers when he drew a sardarji smoking. "Though this community, like the Parsis, has a great sense of humour, this didn't go down well with them." Tailang also got into trouble for depicting a revived Khalistan movement as a dinosaur out of Jurassic Park.
Even so, Indian political cartooning has largely ranged free. Cartoonist Ajit Narayan says, "Most Indian cartoonists play it safe, avoiding regionalism and casteism." But the late Abu wouldn't baulk at drawing politicians as animals, much like Peter Brookes, whose ���Nature Notes' in the London Times famously depict politicians as part of a thriving animal farm.
So the late Abu Abraham would draw Jagjivan Ram as an excessively thick-lipped fish and Indira Gandhi as an elegant and haughty swan. Tailang recalls depicting Narasimha Rao as a frog, politicians as rats during the Surat plague, Devi Lal as a bull and Kanshi Ram as an elephant. Raj Narain, says Unny, was often shown as Hanuman out to burn Lanka "but as this was a mythological character, it was seen in a positive light".
What of today's politicians? Tailang says Manmohan Singh should be shown as a lamb for his docile nature and Advani as a leopard.
Even so, Indian politicians, it seems, are fairly tolerant. Tailang recalls drawing Jaswant Singh in Taliban clothes with a rocket launcher after the Kandahar hijack. "He called me the next day, saying he wanted the original cartoon as he felt he looked cute in it," says Tailang.
Perhaps, it's all about perception and perceived political correctness. As Abu would put it, "An elephant is nothing but a pig with a trunk."
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