In a 1989 essay on MIT’s Dædalus journal, R.K. Laxman wrote that only a political cartoonist would fear utopia, because – “what subject would that leave for his art?”
Present day India’s political cartoonists, then, have little to fear. Not only are conditions sub-utopic, there are also legions ready to attack them over drawings, rally for them to be fired from their workplaces and if the necessity arises, push for contempt of court cases against them.
Political cartooning may have come to India through the British, but most cartoonists who pursue this profession today do it in conditions not dissimilar to colonial times. In the last few years in Narendra Modi’s India, where professors have been punished for preaching tolerance, hawkers have been held for selling balloons with ‘pro-Pakistan’ messages and where a comedian spent 37 days in jail and subsequent cancellation of most bookings for a joke he did not tell, it is something of a feat that the profession of political cartooning persists. And that so many are willing to draw and publish cartoons that point out the irony of the very system that is raring to punish them for this activity.
For two of India’s most well known veteran artists, Manjul and Satish Acharya, the difference is stark. Both have been at it for over three decades, chancing upon the profession by accident. Both say that things have changed since the National Democratic Alliance arrived in 2014.
One nation, one size! #UniformCivilCode pic.twitter.com/f02hsU4qKN
— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) July 6, 2023
“It happened gradually since 2014. Maybe during the United Progressive Alliance’s regime the present one thought that this is ‘our cartoonist’ as they saw me as mostly critical of the UPA government. At first, just after the NDA government came to power, my initial cartoons which questioned the new government weren’t attacked vigorously. Gradually they saw more cartoons and realised that this is not ‘our cartoonist’. And the ‘IT cell’ started targeting me,” Acharya, who has 3.3 lakh Twitter followers, tells The Wire.
In 2018, Acharya cut ties with the India Today Group’s paper Mail Today, which he used to draw for, saying the publication had rejected a cartoon on how China was surrounding India – by inserting claws into neighbouring countries.
Some more cartoons rejected by the same editor. They somehow reached readers through social media. (For bhakts who are spreading lies about plagiarism angle) pic.twitter.com/06ruIl7dbp
— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) August 12, 2018
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When he spoke with The Wire, Acharya did not mention this event, but he did mention that “the concept of the IT cell ‘organising’ narratives on social media began with the NDA [National Democratic Alliance].”
The ‘IT cell’ is a name for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s powerful social media and tech army.
“Trolls are unleashed as soon as you post a cartoon critical of the government. An individual cartoonist doesn’t stand a chance to confront the mammoth size of the IT cell,” Acharya said.
And yet in their roles as commentators, watchers and journalists, individual political cartoonists have only grown more straightforward. Aiding them in the process is social media – both the bane and the boon of their existence.
“Twitter and Instagram have, of course, made it much easier to reach new audiences (and new trolls),” says the artist behind Pen Pencil Draw, whose expertise with placid yet sarcastic English text earned them a following of 45,000 Twitter followers within the last three years.
Issues. pic.twitter.com/5vE2dMyIpE
— PenPencilDraw (@penpencildraw) June 1, 2023
Where there used to be an angry letter from a politician or an uneasy conversation with a harassed editor, there are now hundreds and thousands of hate comments.
Manjul knows with the wisdom of having faced Mulayam Singh Yadav’s thinly veiled wrath as a Lucknow cartoonist in the 1990s, that the best option is to keep at it. “I draw a cartoon a day but publish no more than three or four,” he says. Manjul has 2.6 lakh Twitter followers. “I have blocked 27,000 people on the app,” he adds laconically.
In 2021, Manjul received a notice from Twitter, stating that Indian authorities had instructed it to take action against his page. Immediately afterwards, he was suspended by the Mukesh Ambani-owned Network 18, for publications of which he had drawn for the last six years.
#Cartoon #Manjultoons https://t.co/jxG7ozaRnX pic.twitter.com/TJkffAtOIn
— MANJUL (@MANJULtoons) July 7, 2023
It was never known which of Manjul’s cartoons bothered the government but at that time, most active political cartoonists, including Manjul, had been regularly critical of the Modi government’s handling of the COVID-19 second wave. “Big events lend themselves to cartooning. When the Pokhran nuclear tests took place under Vajpayee’s rule, it was the biggest news of at least two decades then. We freely drew cartoons about it. No one said a thing,” he says.
All newer generation cartoonists The Wire spoke to said it was an event that pushed them into the profession, and not the craft itself.
Samim Akter Sheikh was an undergraduate student at the Aligarh Muslim University when the Citizenship Amendment Act was introduced and the National Register of Citizens dangled above Indians. Sheikh began drawing posters and then cartoons, which he would publish online. Friends would share them. A following grew. And with it, hatred. “This is a very genuine issue for me, because I am not just a political cartoonist, I am a Muslim political cartoonist,” he says. Sheikh has been mass reported, he adds.
Photo: Instagram/Samim Akter Sheikh (the_cartoonist_manifesto)
A Hyderabad University student now, Sheikh is originally from remote Dhubulia village in Bengal’s Nadia. Aware of how spending on drawing pads can add up, Sheikh draws on an app.
“I am happy that I am not living for the sake of art but that I am able to use art to fulfil my purpose. I don’t want to be an artist who sits with his mouth cello-taped at this hour,” he says.
What the CAA was to Sheikh, the 2014 arrests of students for voicing anti-government opinions was to Rachita Taneja – who draws Sanitary Panels and has the unique distinction of fighting a contempt case against the Supreme Court.
Photo: Twitter/@sanitarypanels
Taneja refuses to comment on the case, which was triggered by a complaint against the above cartoon, but is adamant that scrutiny of the government is necessary.
“When satirists are under attack, it’s a warning bell, because when powerful people can’t handle a basic level of scrutiny, they show us that they don’t deserve to hold power,” she says.
You can do anything we 'allow' you to.@sanitarypanels pic.twitter.com/uyivVoxQxe
— TheNewsMinute (@thenewsminute) June 30, 2023
Taneja has kept on drawing, has almost 44,000 Twitter followers and space on The News Minute. Manjul is published by Newslaundry and Satish Acharya, by The South First. The Quint has published Sheikh. All these are independent media organisations, where journalists are perhaps as accustomed to life exposed to trolling as the cartoonists are.
Is the political cartoonist an eternal protester, then – suspended in graphic battle with no end in sight?
Cartoonist siblings Bob and Bobby who have around 20,000 followers each on Instagram, don’t agree, but feel that it has more to do with the fact that cartooning is not their full time profession.
“Although our ideals seep into our films and illustrations as well, we don’t make political art professionally. Initially when I started drawing, it felt like I am part of some revolution. But nowadays I feel I make political art just to get the disgust out of my system, without the hope that it will change anything and that real revolution is being done by people on the ground and activists behind the bar…If some day someone turns up and says, ‘I used to be a hatemonger, but your art made me think differently’…maybe then I would feel that what I did was a form of protest,” says Bob.
Photo: Instagram/bob_almost.
What now?
The eight cartoonists The Wire spoke to – across age and medium – gave similar answers to the question of what the new Information Technology Rules would mean for them. Under these rules, the path for the Union government to get social media intermediaries to take down content it has deemed harmful to itself is remarkably short.
But all say that this is not the end of the road. Assam cartoonist Nituparna Rajbongshi has been drawing caricatures with sharp commentary in Assamese since 1997. He is a veteran of finding a way out.
In 2017, his cartoon on the Gorakhpur children’s hospital deaths got him thousands of threats. Then, during the CAA protests, his cartoons irked both sides of the spectrum.
“See, no newspaper in Assam publishes my cartoons anymore, because they think that my fearless cartooning will hurt their business. So, I took to social media. Then, when I experienced the same challenge of content removal and attacks, I started my own website where people can see my cartoons. IT Rules may push me to say things differently. If people in power force me to shut down my website, I will go to the streets and start drawing,” Rajbongshi says.
#vegetablesprice #Pricehike #farmers #Assam https://t.co/Jxpbr9dbPk pic.twitter.com/n5QWDjDEo1
— Cartoonist Nituparna Rajbongshi (@NituparnaRaj) July 5, 2023
Laxman, in that essay which started this article, called political cartooning “one of the several safeguards of democracy.”
How will its practitioners stay true to their art?
For Pen Pencil Draw, “The tightrope walk will be about remaining mischievous without being called seditious.”
‘The Art of Dissent’ is a new series that aims to look at ways in which people around the world and in India are registering dissent in spite of laws that ban or impinge upon their rights to do so. In subsequent pieces, the series will look at more art, artists, performers and their unique styles of dissenting. Should you wish to contribute to the series or feel like your artwork fits into this broad category, write to soumashree@thewire.in.
