At a time when mainstream Indian media is prostrating itself before the present regime, uncompromising cartoonists are doing their work with utmost integrity
Mahatma Gandhi is our man for all occasions, situations, events and settings. No matter how melancholic or pleasant they might be. He has always been present in all contextual narratives and real time approaches to crisis management, though on ethical or philosophical planks.
His persona may have been controversial to some and ideal to others. But for the majority of thinkers, writers, political and civil society leaders, he has been the first choice to describe Indianness and the Indian ethos overseas.
But the tribe he has fascinated the most are cartoonists. If he were alive today, he would have rather prided himself on being on the canvas of caricaturists rather than being a part of debates in print and on TV screens.
This is for the simple reason that in cartoons, he looks more common than a common man. This is perhaps why cartoonists have never been a clan undivided as pro- or anti-establishment.
They have remained stubbornly against the powers that be, unlike journalists, columnists and authors, the majority of whom were seen on their knees on most occasions post-Independence. Or on occasions when they were expected to raise their voices.
Cartoonists gave Gandhi a pedestal which is a yardstick to judge what is right and what is wrong. During recent happenings in the country, particularly in the past one year, Gandhi was present in every cartoonist’s strip.
During the Citizenship Amendment Act protests, cartoonist Satish Acharya showed him holding a balance, with two communities pelting stones at one another from the right and left pans. He is always present in every cartoonist’s imagination every time an attempt is made to tear apart the social fabric of the country in the name of religion and caste.
At a time when the majority of Indian media is highly biased and has almost lost their credibility, cartoonists look almost as dogged as Gandhi was, laying bare every misinformation and lie.
Well-known cartoonist Manjul shows Gandhi on his spinning wheel while a journalist lookalike tells him that “spinning is still pretty popular Bapu. News channels do it 24x7.” Gandhi’s three monkeys fit in every situation for the caricatures.
Exactly two years ago, cartoonist Madan, while speaking on whether Gandhi was relevant in popular culture, said:
Mahatma Gandhi conversed with the harshest of his critics. Gandhi allowed people around him to ridicule him. Once, Sarojini Naidu even called him a Mickey Mouse to which he replied that his ears were bigger. In Harijan and Young India, he had spoken about sexual problems and he would have a conversation with common people through letters. To me, he is always contemporary
Gandhi becomes that magical pencil or brush in the hands of cartoonists whenever there is crisis, desperation and sense of loss, when things go terribly wrong.
As cartoonist EP Kutty aptly said, “Gandhiji is the cartoonist’s early warning system. When you see him often in cartoons, it is a sign that something is going terribly wrong in our country.” He said that every time there is a crisis, Gandhiji is our best recall button.
In the past seven months since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Indian mainstream media, seemingly in cahoots with the powers that be, did everything except what was expected of them — objective reporting on pandemic-related issues, migrant labourers, data management, joblessness and now farm and labour bills in an unbiased and neutral way.
In such a scenario, Indian cartoonists emerged unlikely winners, with their blunt and incisive strips laying bare all that was hidden amid prime time cacophony.
Gandhi has a massive posthumous presence in every discourse in the country which is simply unparallelled. One reason for that is that our cartoonists embraced him so fondly.
Cartoonists like Shankar, RK Laxman, Abu Abraham, Vijiyan, Sudhir Dar, Rajender Puri, Mario Miranda, Uday Shankar and now Sandeep Adhwaryu, Satish Acharya, Manjul, Sorit or EP Unny are part of this unblemished legacy. Their incisive response to every situation is enough to jolt our consciousness out of complacency.
At a time when every news arouses suspicion and every debate is turning into a cacophony, we can rely on cartoonists who say everything that the big names in media dare not speak about. When attempts are made to hide the truth, they come forward to reveal it with clinical precision.
I still remember a cartoon with Gandhi saying “I was killed by Godse, but I don’t know how many times I have been killed after that”. This was perhaps in the backdrop of the incident when a right-wing activist shot at his effigy.
Only a cartoonist can say this in as many words. It seems Gandhi’s big ears, so prominently figured in cartoonists’ strips, are hearing everything and transmitting that to cartoonists so carefully.
Today, the entire media seems be on one side. They are balancing it out for us. At this time, there seems to be an uncanny similarity between Gandhi and a cartoonist when it comes to speaking the truth.
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