Remembering Rajiv Gandhi

Remembering Rajiv Gandhi: In pics Rajiv Gandhi's 21st death anniversary India paid homage to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed in a suicide bomb attack on this day 21 years ago on 21 May 2012. A speech by the late prime minister, during which he talked about preserving the dignity of institutions, was played at the programme at 'Vir Bhumi' in Delhi where President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, his children Rahul and Priyanka, Vice President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lt Governor Tejinder Khanna, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal and Urban Development paid homage to the departed soul. Here's a tribute to the country's most dynamic late prime minister. Rajiv Gandhi, the elder son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi, was the 7th prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989 At Cambridge, he met Italian-born Sonia Maino whom he later married. After his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi's death in 1980, Gandhi was pressured by the Congress party and his mother Indira Gandhi to enter politics. He became the prime minister after his mother's death on October 31, 1984. Rajiv Gandhi was a professional pilot with Indian Airlines before entering politics At 40, he was the youngest prime minister of India. Rajiv Gandhi during a campaign in Bhopal. Rajiv with wife Sonia Gandhi after a rally. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv at the All India Congress Committee meet. Rajiv Gandhi greeting children at Sihphir, Mizoram. Rajiv Gandhi with wife Sonia Gandhi and family offering flowers at Indira Gandhi's samadhi Rajiv Gandhi behind the wheels Rajiv Gandhi with slain Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto during a SAARC meet. The two hailed from the most powerful political families of the two countries Rajiv with Sonia Gandhi during a campaign He was assassinated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on May 21, 1991 Rajiv Gandhi making his last journey Rahul Gandhi during a prayer session at Rajiv Gandhi's funeral. Rahul Gandhi lighting the pyre of father Rajiv Gandhi Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka at Rajiv Gandhi's cremation. A memorial christened Veer Bhumi was constructed at his cremation spot in New Delhi.

Source : MSN

Jacob Zuma goes to court over painting depicting his genitals

 

 

NSFW 'But Is It Art?' (Zuma with Dick)

The Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg is showing a Brett Murray picture called 'The Spear'. It features an heroic-looking Jacob Zuma with his block and tackle hanging out.
The ANC has reportedly instructed its lawyers to request the gallery to remove the picture, as it has 'dented' the dignity of the President of the ANC and of South Africa.
Spit spit spit.

By royblumenthal.This photo was taken on May 18, 2012 in Sandhurst, Johannesburg, Gauteng, ZA.

This picture is pre-licensed under a Creative Commons 'Attribution' license. Feel free to use it as you see fit. No permission required. No payment either. Just lemme know if you use it. I'd love to know where it pops up. So to speak.

 Source : Flicker 

 

Jacob Zuma goes to court over painting depicting his genitals

South African president says his right to privacy violated by The Spear, triggering row about freedom of speech and racism

Source : The Guardian 

• David Smith in Johannesburg
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 May 2012
• 
  The Spear by South African artists Brett Murray on display at The Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images
  It began with an impression of a man's penis in an art gallery where only a tiny fraction of the population would normally set foot. Now it has become a national debate running the gamut from freedom of expression to the right to privacy, from the nature of racism to "what is art?", and is being seen as nothing less than a test of South Africa's constitutional democracy.
  On Wednesday the president, Jacob Zuma, will bring a court action to argue that a painting showing him with exposed genitalia should be removed because it violates his right to dignity and makes a mockery of his office.
  The claim is disputed by the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, which is displaying the 1.85m-high (6ft 1in) painting, entitled The Spear, as part of artist Brett Murray's Hail to the Thief II exhibition.
  Freedom of speech is protected in South Africa but Zuma's governing African National Congress (ANC) believes that, in this instance, it has a case beyond mere censorship of its critics. It contends that the artwork is playing up to crude stereotypes of African male sexuality. It is no doubt aware that Murray is white.
  Zuma states in a legal affidavit: "The continued display of the portrait is manifestly serious and has the effect of impugning my dignity in the eyes of all who see it. In particular, the portrait depicts me in a manner that suggests that I am a philanderer, a womaniser and one with no respect. It is an undignified depiction of my personality and seeks to create doubt about my personality in the eyes of my fellow citizens, family and children.
  "In terms of the theme of the exhibition, my portrait is meant to convey a message that I am an abuser of power, corrupt and suffer political ineptness."
  The president added that he was shocked and "felt personally offended and violated".
  The ANC has been rallying around its leader over the painting. Gwede Mantashe, its secretary general, said on Monday: "It's rude, it's crude, it's disrespectful."
  If it had been a white man depicted, the reaction would have been very different, he added, but as far as many people were concerned, black people were just objects.
  "I said, 'How about the idea of going to court tomorrow and as we sit there we can take off our trousers? ... we can walk around with our genitals hanging out'.
  "It's crude … we have not outgrown racism in our 18 years [of democracy]."
  Ngoako Selamolela, president of the South African Students' Congress, added: "This arrogance is ideological and an attack to the very value and moral systems of the majority African people and many other religious persuasions."
  And Wally Serote, a leading poet and writer, suggested the painting was no different to labelling black people "kaffirs" – a highly offensive term.
  "Blacks feel humiliated and spat on by their white counterparts in situations like this," he was quoted as saying. "We all need to learn that as creative people we have a responsibility to see that our work contributes to building a new South Africa, free from prejudice."
  Zuma is a polygamous Zulu who has married six times and has four wives. In 2010, he publicly apologised for fathering a child out of wedlock, said to be his 20th overall. In 2006, he was cleared of raping an HIV-positive friend but caused anger by saying he took a shower after having sex with her.
  "It will be his sexual legacy that we will remember more than anything else," said the columnist Mondli Makhanya in South Africa's Sunday Times, adding: "His sexual endeavours are therefore fair game for artists, cartoonists, comedians, radio DJs and tavern jokers."
  Other South Africans, both black and white, have taken the view that, as a public figure, Zuma should be thick-skinned when it comes to satire.
  Tselane Tambo, daughter of the late ANC stalwart Oliver Tambo, reportedly posted on a social networking site: "So the Pres JZ has had his portrait painted and he doesn't like it.
  "Do the poor enjoy poverty? Do the unemployed enjoy hopelessness? Do those who can't get housing enjoy homelessness? He must get over it. No one is having a good time. He should inspire the reverence he craves. This portrait is what he inspired. Shame neh!"
  The row has been good for business at the gallery, where staff estimate there were 50 or 60 visitors at any one time on Saturday, more than double the usual attendance.
  A spokeswoman for the gallery said: "The gallery provides a neutral space in which 'dialogue and free expression' is encouraged. In this space the ANC's right to condemn the work is acknowledged as much as the artist's right to display it. This, the gallery believes, is democracy at work.
  "But the gallery cannot give up its right to decide what art will hang on its walls. For this reason we are opposing the application brought by the ANC and President Zuma for the removal of the artwork."
  The Goodman Gallery will be increasing security and may search visitors, she added, amid rumours of a possible public protest. South Africa's Sunday Times reported that The Spear had been sold for 136,000 rand (£10,345) to a German buyer.
  ----------------------------------

  “Start Quote

  The portrait depicts me in a manner that suggests I am a philanderer, a womaniser and one with no respect”

  Jacob Zuma
    ---------------------------------------

  Jacob Zuma painting vandalised in South Africa gallery

  The BBC's Milton Nkosi reports from the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg

  A controversial painting showing South Africa's President Jacob Zuma with his genitals hanging out has been vandalised in an art gallery.
  The BBC's Andrew Harding at the gallery in Johannesburg said two men covered the art work in black and red paint
  It comes as the governing ANC was asking the High Court to force the Goodman Gallery to remove the painting.
  The $14,000 (£9,000) 1.85m-high Soviet-style, red black and yellow acrylic painting had already been sold.
  Called The Spear, the painting is by Brett Murray, who is known for his political and provocative work.
  Footage shown on local television showed a man in a suit painting a red cross over the president's genital area and then his face, AP news agency reports.
  Then another man, wearing a hooded top, rubbed black paint over the president's face and down the painting with his hands.
  "The white middle-aged man was the one who started it off and a young black man finished it off," Lance Claasen, a Khaya FM radio reporter who witnessed the defacing, told the AFP news agency.
  Our correspondent says he saw one man wielding the paint brush, who was then pounced on by security guards and head-butted at one point.
  "I'm doing this because the painting is disrespectful to President Zuma," one of the men told the BBC.
  
  
  
  The African National Congress has described the work as "rude, crude and disrespectful".
  Earlier a crowd of ANC supporters had gathered near the court house in Johannesburg where the ruling party's challenge to get to the painting removed was being heard.
  It was decided that a full bench of the High Court would hear the case on Thursday.
  "This is a matter of great national importance," the South African Press Association quotes Judge Kathree Setiloane as saying.
  The exhibition at the Goodman Gallery opened earlier this month and was scheduled to close on 16 June.
  'Undignified' The ANC is also demanding that the City Press newspaper remove a photograph of the painting from its website.
  In an affidavit served on the paper, Mr Zuma said he was shocked by the work saying: "The portrait depicts me in a manner that suggests I am a philanderer, a womaniser and one with no respect. It is an undignified depiction of my personality and seeks to create doubt about my personality in the eyes of fellow citizens, family and children."
  
  Jacob Zuma's angry supporters gathered outside the High Court on Tuesday
  "It is an undignified depiction of my personality and seeks to create doubt about my personality in the eyes of fellow citizens, family and children," South Africa's Sunday Independent quotes his statement as saying.
  President Zuma, who has four wives, has sued local media companies 11 times for defamation - some of which has been settled, others dropped, but most are outstanding.
  The best-known case is a 2008 suit against one of the country's most high-profile artists, Zapiro, after he depicted Mr Zuma about to rape a female figure representing justice - this is due to be heard in October.
  Mr Zuma was cleared of raping a family friend in 2006.
  Two years ago, the ANC condemned a painting on show at a Johannesburg shopping centre that depicted the body of Nelson Mandela undergoing an autopsy, saying it violated the anti-apartheid icon's dignity.

Source : BBC

Mamata Banerjee personifies populist force in Indian politics.

And the biggest obstacle to its economic liberalization.

Source: The Washington Post  

By Simon Denyer, Published: May 21

 

KOLKATA, India — She spent her life fighting communists but is the biggest obstacle to economic liberalization in India today. She is the leader of a small regional party but wields more power than the prime minister.

Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of the state of West Bengal, is a rising force in Indian politics, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton paid a special visit to Kolkata this month to meet her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Source : The Washington Post

 March 19, 2012

Banerjee's distrust of her critics, her sense that anyone who opposes her belongs to some vast communist conspiracy, has done most to alienate people.

Parivartan Sharma / reuters

April 21, 2012
Banerjee is a hero to her supporters who ended more than three decades of communist rule in West Bengal. They say Banerjee shelters farmers and shopkeepers from the harsh winds of globalization, while guiding West Bengal toward its rightful place as an economic and cultural powerhouse. But others see her as the biggest obstacle to economic liberalization of India.
Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

----

April 21, 2012

The 57-year-old is known to be a resolutely populist and hard-working politician who holds the balance of power in India's coalition government.
Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

 

May 20, 2011

Despite her growing intolerance for dissent and consistent policies blocking important decisions, some in India are willing to give her the benefit of doubt.

AP

 

 

She has a massive following in her home state, where her supporters call her "Didi" or elder sister. Although she remains popular among the poor, she has managed to alienate middle-class Bengalis because of a series of populist decisions she made since last year.

Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP

 

May 7, 2012

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks to Mamata Banerjee before a meeting in Kolkata, India. Banerjee has stymied government efforts to lift restrictions on foreign-owned investments in the country.

Bikas Das / AP

 

April 23, 2011

Banerjee's opposition has foundered many attempts to introduce economic change by Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh. In a recent survey, 25 out of 50 CEOs said that she was the biggest stumbling block to economic growth in India.

Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

Jan. 25, 2012
A security man stands guard as supporters of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee await her arrival during a campaign rally, in Langjing, India. Although a leader of a small party, Banerjee wields a lot of power in Indian politics.
Anupam Nath / AP

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The 57-year-old Banerjee — determined, resolutely populist and hardworking, yet eccentric and intolerant of dissent — holds the balance of power in India’s coalition government and has used that political might to huge effect.
Time after time, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s efforts to introduce economic reforms have foundered because of Baner­jee’s opposition. Time magazine recently listed her among the world’s 100 most influential people, and 25 out of 50 CEOs surveyed by a leading Indian newspaper last week said she was the biggest stumbling block to economic growth.
Banerjee is the personification of a fundamental change that is transforming Indian politics: the declining vote share of the country’s two main political parties and the rising influence of regional parties.
To some, she also personifies a fear that politics will fragment to such an extent that India becomes almost ungovernable, that populists pandering to local interests will block important policy decisions.
“We are not Marxist or capitalist, we are for the poor people,” she said in her first major interview with a foreign newspaper. “Our policy is very clear: whatever policy will suit the people, whatever policy will suit the circumstances, whatever policy will suit my state.”
Nicknamed “Didi,” or elder sister, Banerjee wrested power last May from a communist government that had ruled the state of West Bengal for 34 years. But she has been no better for business and investment than her predecessors were, to the dis­appointment of those who had hoped that the vanquishing of the communists from their biggest foothold in the country would help revitalize eastern India. On the national stage, she holds just 19 seats in the 543-seat Parliament but wields immense influence.
In October, Singh’s government announced a long-promised reform: Foreign supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart would be allowed in. Just 12 days later, worried about the future of small shopkeepers in her state, Banerjee forced the government to back down.
To protect the poor, she has blocked attempts to raise gas prices, despite huge subsidies that are bleeding government finances, and overturned a small increase in railway fares. She opposes legislation that would open the country’s banking, insurance and pension sectors to more foreign investment.
Yet in what may have been shrewd diplomacy, or a sign of a genuine personal rapport, Clinton embraced her warmly. A “remarkable” experience, the secretary of state said of their hour-long discussion, which was characterized as “warm, vibrant and energetic.”
Clinton talked of the “common bond” she shares with women who have broken through barriers of discrimination and braved the fire of electoral politics. Indeed, Banerjee claims to be the only woman who has risen to political power in South Asia without being the widow, orphaned daughter or former girlfriend of an established leader.
A poor schoolteacher’s daughter, Banerjee never married and still lives in a single room, just 8 by 8 feet, in a Kolkata neighborhood beside a foul-smelling open drain. A member of Parliament for India’s Congress party at age 29, she left the party in 1997 over what she deemed an unfair denial of the leadership role in West Bengal. She then formed her own party, the Trinamool (grass-roots) Congress, to take on the communists.
The communists controlled every aspect of life in West Bengal during their long rule, politicizing the police and even the education system by putting party workers in key positions and banning English from state primary schools for 25 years. Militant trade unions became so powerful that they virtually ran factories in this state of 91 million people.
Pointing to the scars on her elbows and the damage to her wrists, she recalled shielding her head from repeated beatings with sticks and iron rods during protests. She was often hospitalized, and she nearly died after a 26-day hunger strike.
She remains popular among the poor, but her populist decisions and growing intolerance of dissent have alienated many middle-class Bengalis who had welcomed her victory a year ago.
While in the opposition, Banerjee fiercely defended farmers’ rights against clumsy attempts by industry and government to seize their land to make way for factories — forcing Tata Motors to abandon plans in 2008 to set up a car factory. But in government, her failure to design a workable alternative land-acquisition policy has become a barrier to the investment that the impoverished and crowded state desperately needs, business leaders say.
Under communist rule, the technology services company Infosys was poised to set up a software-development center that would have brought more than 10,000 jobs. Banerjee refused to allow it the status of a special economic zone, and Infosys last month put the project on hold “indefinitely.”
Banerjee says the communists have left her state bankrupt, saddled with a $40 billion debt. The rusting hulks of abandoned factories still ring Kolkata, testament to decades of economic mismanagement under communist rule.
But critics say Banerjee has no strategy to repair the damage. She says she cannot afford to give tax breaks to industry, but she has found the money to hire 90,000 extra teachers and police personnel, give monthly stipends to Muslim imams, and symbolically remove all vestiges of communist rule by painting every railing and bridge in Kolkata blue.
Her cabinet wins widespread respect, but she keeps all her ministers cowed, critics say, and is the only person empowered to make any real decisions.
“She has tremendous rustic intelligence, but she has yet to get to grips with the realities of the economic situation she is facing,” said prominent businessman Sudhir Jalan.
Yet Jalan said Banerjee is beginning to soften toward industry, to realize that she has a problem, even if she doesn’t yet know how to solve it.
To attract American investors, she put her best foot forward.
“We cannot offer what other states can offer, because of our situation — but we can extend our cooperation from the heart,” she said. “We can touch your heart, but maybe not financially.”
Still, she is determined to keep her election pledges, and that means no foreign supermarkets. “I am ready to die, but I cannot cheat the people,” she said.
Conspiracy theories
But it is her distrust of criticism, her sense that anyone who dares to oppose her is part of some vast communist conspiracy, that has done the most to alienate the intelligentsia in one of India’s foremost cultural centers.
When a woman was gang-raped, Banerjee accused her of fabricating the case to “malign” her government. When a chemistry professor shared a cartoon by e-mail mocking the chief minister, he was beaten by her party workers and arrested.
Asked about the cartoon, Banerjee launched into a tirade about how her Marxist political opponents were plotting with Maoist rebels to discredit and kill her, in league with Pakistani intelligence and financed by North Korea, Venezuela and Hun­gary.
“They have given me the death sentence, and every day they are spreading this superimposed photo, on Facebook, on Internet or in the e-mail, through some false, camouflaged name,” she said.
Optimists say the rise of regional parties is not necessarily bad for India, especially if states win more power to shape their own economic policies, allowing development to proceed at a different pace in different parts of the country.
Some are also inclined to give Banerjee the benefit of the doubt, to argue that she is learning on the job.
“She is intolerant,” said Ananya Chatterjee, a journalism professor and Banerjee supporter. “But you needed someone who is a little bit intolerant, who is a little bit crazy, to throw the left out of power after so long.”

Ambedkar cartoon and the uproar

Ambedkar cartoon and the uproar

 

The cartoons and the uproar of politicians

It turns out that the cartoon of Dr BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru is just the starting point. Nearly 200 other cartoons currently used in school textbooks are to be reviewed and most likely deleted. Here are some of the controversial cartoon used in NCERT textbooks.

Source : NDTV 

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 Ambedkar cartoon and the uproar

When a Cartoon Gets in the Way of Real Work

By Megha Bahree, May 17, 2012,

Prakash Singh/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Cartoons displayed at India Gate, urging people to vote ahead of the 2009 general elections, New Delhi.

These days the gatekeepers of democratic India—the Parliamentarians who are entrusted with passing laws that will make India a better place to live and do business in— seem easily distracted.
What’s causing a ruckus in that hallowed house this time around is a cartoon that dates back to 1949.
The offending cartoon – which was sketched by a legendary political cartoonist of the era, K. Shankar Pillai—depicts Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who was the head of the panel drafting the Constitution, sitting on a snail, holding a whip.
The word “Constitution” is written on the snail. Behind the snail stands then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, holding another whip. For most, the cartoon hinted that  Mr. Nehru was trying to goad the snail on.
But instead of reading it as a comment on the slow pace of framing of the Constitution, several politicians saw it as an insult to Mr. Ambedkar – even if there are no records from the time that either of the gentlemen depicted in it had a problem with it.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the lower house of Parliament said all objectionable materials, and even the books if need be, will be removed.
Kapil Sibal, India’s human resource development minister, agreed and said the textbooks will not be distributed in the current school year. He vowed to remove existing books from circulation and called on the National Council of Educational Research and Training, the government agency that decides on curriculum and content, to ensure that there are no other such offending materials in other books.
Objections to the cartoon were first raised by Ramdas Athawale, president of the Republican Party of India, who said the cartoon that ridiculed Ambedkar was an insult to the Constitution and to Parliament. (No matter that the content had been thoroughly vetted by a variety of experts.
The fall out, apart from holding Parliament hostage from real work, has been that the chief advisors of all political science textbooks at NCERT have quit. Members of Mr. Athawale’s party ransacked the office of one of the advisors. That, he said, was an expression of “indignation on the part of the Dalit community.” Ambedkar was a Dalit, a group that historically falls at the bottom of India’s caste system, and is a popular icon in that community.
It’s not that parliamentarians didn’t have more important things to worry about – they did.
A total of 96 bills were pending in Parliament at the start of the ongoing Budget session, according to PRS Legislative Research, a nonprofit research firm based in New Delhi.
Of these, the government listed 39 for consideration, in addition to the finance bill. So far only four have been passed by both houses of Parliament.
The government had also planned to introduce 30 new bills in this session, but only introduced 13.
With the Budget session due to end May 22, there isn’t much time left to introduce or debate new bills, especially when lawmakers are busy discussing a cartoon from 63 years ago.
Besides, not much time was spent on the handful of bills that were introduced. According to PRS Legislative Research, 18% of bills passed since 2009 in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament, were discussed for less than five minutes. Another 10% were passed with less than 30 minutes of discussion. Some of them – around 17% – did get their attention for a period of at least three hours.
It’s common for lawmakers to kick up a fuss in Parliament over a wide range of issues, trivial and not. So much so that last week, in a speech celebrating the 60^th anniversary of Parliament, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged both houses to pull themselves together.
“The daily routine of disruptions, adjournments and shouting in Parliament are leading many outside to question the efficacy of the institution and faith in public affairs,” Mr. Singh said.
While the debate over the cartoon took center stage, here are a few bills that have been pushed to the sidelines:
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill. This has been passed in Rajya Sabha but is still pending in the Lok Sabha. (Even Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan talked about the need for this in his show Satyamev Jayte last Sunday.)
The Protection of Women from Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill. This was initially introduced in December 2010 in the Lok Sabha. It was reintroduced in this current session but various uproars in Parliament, including over the cartoon, got in the way.
The Whistle Blowers Protection Bill. This was introduced in August 2010 and was passed by the Lok Sabha last August. It is currently pending in the Rajya Sabha. So what if some poor sod is risking his life to expose corruption. He can take care of himself a bit longer, surely.
The Prevention of Bribery of Foreign Public Officials and Officials of Public International Organizations Bill. This was introduced in the Lok Sabha in March last year. It’s still there. But what’s a little money sloshing around amongst friends. In any case, it’s always the fault of the foreign hand.
Source : WSJ

Ambedkar cartoon row: An act of cowardly populism, says Shiv Visvanathan

ET Bureau May 15, 2012, Source : ET

Shiv Visvanathan
Babasaheb Ambedkar is one of the most fascinating figures in Indian politics. In hagiographic terms, if Gandhi is the father of the nation, Ambedkar is father of the Indian Constitution. Both have a legendary status which inspires hagiolatry. Any critique of them is seen as iconoclastic.

Gandhians tend to put Gandhi in moth balls in their Ashrams. Dalits similarly tend to freeze Ambedkar, disallowing the slightest controversy. Strangely Hindu gods are allowed more leeway and more plural narratives, but not our political heroes.
The Lellyweld controversy over Gandhi's relationship to Herman Kallenbach aroused the ire of Gandhians. Similarly, a 1949 cartoon of Ambedkar and the Constitution in a NCERT textbook has prompted a protest in Parliament and an immediate withdrawal of the cartoon.
Two advisers to the NCERT resigned arguing that the cartoon as a text was not read within the entirety of the context. Two immaculate professionals were abandoned by the education minister in another knee-jerk display of populist politics. The event needs to be analysed in detail.
First, as records go, neither Ambedkar nor Nehru had any objection to the cartoon. Shankar's cartoon is an affectionate one, cheeky at the most. For a cartoonist to show irreverence is natural, but there is never anything insulting about a Shankar cartoon. It is usually presented in the form of a gentle chiding. Even the outlines are gentle, a cartoon without being a caricature. Shankar had a softness, which later political cartoonists like Ranga or Unny avoided.
The first objection to the cartoon is based on the assumption that what was good for 1949 may not be appropriate for 2012. The argument is as follows. The Constitutional assembly as a ritual process is over. It is now a contract, even a sacrament. Second, Ambedkar is now an iconic figure and to treat an icon to the irreverence of a cartoon is to insult him.
Third, Dalits are a greater power now and will not allow their icons to be insulted. The argument suggests that the memory of Ambedkar is as sacred to the Dalits as Mrs Gandhi to the Congress or MGR to AIADMK. Icons are items of faith, not to be subject to critical scrutiny.
It's sad the way our politicians responded to the cartoon. Pranab Mukherjee used all his wily scholarship to praise Ambedkar's role and decries the cartoon as inappropriate. Sibal jumped on the bandwagon by assuring Parliament that a review of NCERT books has been ordered.
Others agreed with it, arguing that the cartoon was out of fashion in the age of political assertion. The sadness is that such a reading leaves two things unexamined. First, the cartoon itself and second, the imagination of the scholars who used the cartoon to enliven history and make it more understandable.
A look at the cartoon, not a great one, shows it to be an innocuous piece. No ego is threatened, no status questioned. In fact, the Constitutional process as a dialogue between Nehru and Ambedkar comes out clearly. As a pedagogic device, the cartoon works. As a piece of history, it is sufficiently memorable.

Contrast this gentle piece of work by Shankar with the Danish cartoons in Jyllands-Posten. These were twelve editorial cartoons, which reviled a prophet and insulted a faith. Kurt Westergaard's cartoons were insulting while Shankar Pillai's cartoons were an act of faith in the constitutional process, a tribute to its main architects. It is a piece of history, an accompaniment to the Constitution.
Instead of treating it as an act of pride, our politicians, in an act of cowardly populism, read it as something shameful. It is a misreading of politics, an act of bad faith, made doubly ridiculous by the fact an education minister lets down a responsible group of academics.
It is not Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar who should have resigned as advisers to the NCERT. Kapil Sibal should have stood ground. He should have claimed Ambedkar as the nation's legacy and not just a Dalit icon.
As a responsible education minister, he should have stuck to reason and not played to the political gallery. The messages to the world of education whether through the AK Ramanujan controversy on the many Ramayans, or the Ambedkar cartoon is clear. Scholarship is something to be devalued before populism and democracy is to be respected as a text, but not in real life. There is a warning here that academics will not fail to read.
Finally, there is question of democracy as a way of life. Our Parliament of late seems to be redefining it in an Orwellian way. On Anna Hazare, our Parliament acts as if civil society should be disciplined and punished for contempt of Parliament. On Ambedkar, it ignores years of scholarship and the culture of cartooning as an intrinsic part of constitutional democracy.
By behaving the way it did, it was Parliament that insulted the spirit of the Constitution. The sadness was that even Pranab Mukherjee, dreaming of being President of the nation, did not see the irony. Why should a search for justice or fairness get eroded by token acts of respect? Populism that we witness actually devalues the work of Ambedkar.
I think the great Indian disease is political correctness as a new strain of hypocrisy. It goes well with sycophancy. Between the two, power corrupts itself, the memory of a great politician and the world of the academic. To think Ambedkar belongs only to the Dalits is a travesty of history. To embalm him in political hypocrisy insults the courage of man. To deny him laughter, self reflexivity is the bigger crime. This much our academics understood, but our politicians did not.
Shiv Visvanathan is a social science nomad

Govt panics as cartoon from 1949 halts House

Outrage in Lok Sabha. PTI

Express news service Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal today announced removal of a cartoon made back in 1949 by Shankar from an NCERT political science textbook for Class XI after an uproar in Parliament terming it “insulting” to Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. “For the next year, we will remove all these cartoons. But even this year, till we review the situation, the present textbooks will not be distributed,” Sibal said as members cutting across political lines protested against the cartoon in the NCERT book, Indian Constitution at Work. The minister also offered to “apologise” outside Parliament and said that he had decided to set up a committee to look into all textbooks after he “found there were many other such cartoons about other leaders which are objectionable”. The sketch by legendary political cartoonist K Shankar Pillai, who passed away in 1989, dates back to the time when the Constituent Assembly was at work, and shows Ambedkar sitting on a snail with the word ‘Constitution’ written on it, holding a whip. Behind the snail stands Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru holding another whip, apparently trying to goad the snail on. While the cartoon was meant to be a comment on the slow pace of the framing of the Constitution, members today claimed it could be inferenced that Nehru was trying to push Ambedkar, the head of the panel writing the statute, to hasten the process. Trying to placate MPs, Sibal said the HRD Ministry had written to the Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), late last month “to withdraw the cartoon”. Among the first to raise the matter was Chidambaram MP Thirumaa Valavan Thol. “...Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru whipping Dr Ambedkar to expedite the constitutional work... it is really a great insult to both the leaders. It is a very great insult to the nation, insult to Parliament, and insult to both the leaders... So, please withdraw the book and take necessary action against the publishers,” the Lok Sabha MP of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi demanded. Thol received support from the Samajwadi Party and BSP members, followed by the Congress and BJP, forcing adjournment of the House. Assuring that Sibal would respond, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said: “I don’t know who has brought out this cartoon and with this impression. It is totally wrong. Dr Ambedkar is considered the Ved Vyas of Indian Constitution and without his tireless efforts, the biggest Magna Carta of socio-economic transformation, as it was described by Sir Anthony Eden, would not have been possible.” In the Rajya Sabha, the BSP took up the issue, forcing three adjournments, despite Sibal repeatedly offering to clarify the issue. BSP chief Mayawati threatened to stall proceedings if the Centre did not take action against the persons behind the cartoon. She demanded that the government move court and register FIRs. After the Lok Sabha was adjourned twice over the matter, Sibal announced that the cartoon would be withdrawn and the circulation of the said textbook stopped immediately.

Source : Indian Express 

Aftermath of Ambedkar cartoon: NCERT advisor Suhas Palshikar under attack

Posted by News Bureau on May 12, 2012 in Current Affairs, India

 The office of Suhas Palshikar, one of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) advisors who resigned from his post yesterday over the Dr BR Ambedkar cartoon row, was attacked today in Pune. According to reports, two to three people went to meet the former NCERT official today and then attacked his office. They also reportedly shouted slogans in the name of Dr Ambedkar. Mr Palshikar, however, was not hurt during the attack. Two of the attackers, who allegedly belong to a new organisation named the Republican Panthers Party of India, have been arrested by the police. These youngsters floated the new organisation after they were ousted from Dalit leader Ramdas Athavale’s Republican Party of India (A). Mr Palshikar, who is the head of the Political Science department in the University of Pune, has said that he will not initiate action against the attackers. However, he wants action against those who instigated the attack.
“I don’t want the people who ransacked my office to be punished because they have been provoked and I don’t think punishment will help them. Their leaders should be told that this is not how debates are done. We may not hold the same view point but that doesn’t allow anyone to ransack my office. We live in a democracy and difference of views must be respected,” said Mr Palshikar.
Mr Palshikar along with fellow NCERT advisor Yogendra Yadav resigned on Friday after an uproar in Parliament over the controversial cartoon of Dr BR Ambedkar in the text books. Today, Mr Yadav said that he does not believe the cartoon is an insult to Dr Ambedkar, and that its symbolism has to be understood correctly.
“I personally do not think that that cartoon denigrates Dr Ambedkar. He himself did not think it did so. Any cartoon or any piece of art must be understood by keeping in mind that you can’t take a xerox copy of one particular thing and say, is it good or is it bad. First you have to understand the symbolism of it, if you start to take all piece of art literally, then you would have to ban, then you would have to ban all poetry in this country, all the art forms, and cartoons in this country,” said Mr Yadav.
In fact, speaking to NDTV today, Dr Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar also said that the cartoon was misinterpreted and that the NCERT advisors should not have quit. ”Dr Ambedkar’s supporters have been hurt by the cartoon… Don’t withdraw the book, delete the cartoon… the NCERT advisors should not have quit,” he said.
The row has also angered the academic community which has condemned the hasty censorship which the government had resorted to. ”It is an unnecessary controversy… It is a classic case of constructed hurt and invented controversy… The government must allow for more public debate on this issue,” said Zoya Hasan, a Political Science professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The cartoon in question depicts Dr Ambedkar, the author of the Indian Constitution, sitting on a snail and the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru standing behind him, brandishing a whip. The text alongside criticises Dr Ambedkar and suggests he went slow on framing the Constitution. Sketched by renowned cartoonist Shankar in 1949, the cartoon has been part of the NCERT book since 2006. The MPs waved copies of the cartoon in Parliament yesterday and said it insulted both leaders. Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal later apologised, and said he had already directed NCERT to remove the cartoon on April 26 this year.ndtv.com
Take look at its video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7btonwBVhE&feature=related

Outraged Cong MPs should read Indira too

Shradhha Sharma

Wednesday, May 16, 2012, Source : FE
Chandigarh: Cartoonists have become an integral part of the intellectual life of a modern society. Some draw without intent to draw blood; some remove masks and hold a mirror to the face of society. There cannot be a cartoon without a certain amount of irreverence. But it depends on the cartoonist whether the irreverence aims at malice or irony... Shankar was not afraid to wound if there was a reason to do so.

That was then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in July 1983 in a foreword to a collection of cartoons by K Shankar Pillai. Someone should have told this to the MPs, especially the ones from the Congress, who forced a ban on cartoons “offensive” to politicians in NCERT school textbooks. Many of the “offensive” cartoons feature Indira Gandhi while it was Shankar’s sketch that set off the furore.
The foreword by the late PM was to a children’s book whose title Don’t Spare Me Shankar (published in 1983 and reprinted in 2009) was itself borrowed from Jawaharlal Nehru’s affectionate remark to Shankar, by then famous for lampooning virtually every political figure of the time.
“...Turning over (the book’s) pages, we relive the controversies of yesterday — the vanities of some, and the intrinsic strength of the man who stood above them in large-heartedness, ability and vision,” Indira Gandhi added.
The book was published by the Children’s Book Trust which Shankar founded in 1957. The CBT also runs the famous Shankar’s International Dolls Museum in Delhi. Among other sketches, the cartoons in the book depict MPs as hounds baying for the Opposition, shown as rats. One has Nehru punching Ram Manohar Lohia, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and JP, among others. Another has Nehru delivering a well-aimed kick upstairs to some ministers reluctant to accept gubernatorial positions. One cartoon dated May 23, 1954, interestingly, has Nehru egging on his ministers, all of whom are on snails holding whips. It is dubbed “Indian Derby.” It was a Shankar cartoon showing B R Ambedkar on a snail with a whip, with Nehru standing behind him holding another whip, that was seen to be offensive by MPs.
“My father could have easily interchanged who was sitting on the snail. What mattered was the subject, which was the delay in framing the Constitution,” Shanta Srinivasan, Shankar’s elder daughter, who heads the Shankar’s International Dolls Museum, told The Indian Express. “All this has really hurt us. In the last two days, we have been very hurt. We are all very sad.”
The grandson of B R Ambedkar, Prakash Ambedkar, himself dismisses the entire controversy. “The Congress and BJP are both dumb and paralytic so they need to be spoonfed. These vultures (opposed to the use of cartoons in textbooks) are spoonfeeding them,” says Prakash, a former MP himself. “We don’t have a leader who can stand up and say that we are not going to tolerate such nonsense. Today’s politicians lack humour and knowledge,” he added.
According to Prakash, the contentious cartoon of Ambedkar at the centre of the controversy could have been removed, but the rest of the NCERT book should have remained as it was.
Yogendra Yadav, who resigned as chief advisor to the NCERT after the cartoon row, said the media should perhaps also speak to the students who have so far been kept out of this discourse.
This is not the first time Shankar’s cartoons have riled politicians. In her much-acclaimed biography titled Shankar, which was published by CBT, Alaka Shankar, the cartoonist’s daughter-in-law, narrates how a cartoon by Shankar, which depicted women students of Lady Irwin College as ‘Thinking of opening a Lipstick Service Station at Connaught Place’ raised the hackles of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the then Chairperson of the All India Women’s Conference.
Kaur wrote to then Hindustan Times editor Devdas Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s son, demanding that he fire Shankar as the newspaper’s cartoonist. She took her lament to Sarojini Naidu, who did ring up Shankar, but only to ask for an idli-sambar treat. As a last resort, Kaur went to Gandhiji who summoned Shankar. Describing the meeting, Alaka Shankar writes: “Shankar calmly narrated the incident (he attended the college convocation where, he said, the students had ‘blindly applied lipstick across their mouths’) that had incited him to draw the particular cartoon...Gandhiji heard him silently and in the end, he took one more look at the cartoon and burst out laughing. ‘You are acquitted, Shankar!’ he said.”

 ----------------------------------- May 19, 2012, 

What They Said: Cartoon Row Stalls Parliament

By Diksha Sahni

Deshakalyan Chowdhury/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A man walked past a wall adorned with a political cartoon in Kolkata, April 13, 2004.

This past week, an unusual ruckus stalled work in the Indian Parliament as a cartoon reportedly dating back to 1949 disrupted the proceedings of both houses.
The cartoon in question featured Dalit icon and the author of the Indian constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, being chased with a whip by first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
The cartoon, which features in school textbooks for class XI, drawn by cartoonist Shankar, depicted Mr. Nehru asking Mr. Ambedkar to speed up work on the constitution.
India’s education minister Kapil Sibal had to apologize amid protest from party’s that represent Dalits. There also were reports the government was also mulling removing the cartoon from  textbooks.
The cartoon row not only got in the way of real work, the controversy also generated debate over censorship and whether politics should play a role in the classroom.
Here’s a roundup of what some newspapers editorials and opinion columns had to say on the matter:
Satvik Verma, a lawyer, wrote in The Financial Express that the controversy erupted the day after the Indian Parliament turned 60 and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a speech, talked about upholding the dignity of the house. Mr. Satvik said it was “alarming” how easily the government is willing to curb freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution on fears that protests could spill over into violence.
“Let it be remembered that freedom of expression is a liberty guaranteed against the state and hence it is the duty of the state to protect it and the state cannot plead its inability to handle hostile audience problems to give up the freedom granted to the citizens,” he wrote.
Mr. Verma said politicians risk setting a bad precedent by dictating contents of school curricula and textbooks.  “It is dangerous if this is being done to curtail political dissent. It can be catastrophic if the intent is only to appease certain factions of our diverse society, especially the ones who assert themselves aggressively.”
“Let’s hope we lose neither our sense of humour nor our sense of mutual respect and tolerance and embark upon the journey of the next 60 years of Parliament with the same bonhomie that was displayed recently.”
For Ronojoy Sen, who wrote an opinion piece in Wednesday’s The Times of India, the issue at stake wasn’t freedom of speech, but the kind of education system India wants. The threat to pull the cartoon shows the “outdated ideas that our MPs have on pedagogy and school education.”
“If Indian politicians think that this approach is poisoning the minds of students, we must reach the sad conclusion that the latest pedagogical methods have bypassed our MPs and that they are firm believers in rote learning,” Mr. Sen wrote.

He added that the attitude of the politicians “reeks of paternalism” and “completely underestimates the minds of today’s teenagers.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of Center for Policy Research, wondered in an editorial in The Indian Express if the controversy is a sign of “deeper intellectual and cultural malaise?”
Mr. Mehta said the controversy that played out in the Parliament followed a familiar script where all politicians joined in the protest without much debate and thought.
“So we have a public culture in which the definition of what counts as offensive rapidly expands, more pretexts are found to increase the chasm between different groups, more fetters are put on thought, more intimidation is used to send a warning to intellectuals and more excuses found to exercise control. And all this is done under false pretexts and a contrived political consensus.”
Mr. Mehta noted that there are several reasons why there is little resistance to such actions. One of  is that “most community identities in our politics are constituted by a narrative of victimhood.” As a result, “we have a moral psychology oriented to feeling under assault; and the need to give expression to it, as a group becomes powerful.”
Another reason, he said, is that India has a public culture that produces two kinds of insecurities – political insecurity and intellectual insecurity.
“The only politicians we have who know the ground they stand on, and who are politically self-confident, are those who have strong community identifications….The rest simply do not have the political self-confidence to take a stand on anything,” he writes.