The cartoon illustrated above has created an uproar in Parliament with MPs cutting across party lines condemning the cartoon which was first published in 1949 in
Shankaar's Weekly. The cartoon shows Pandit Nehru with a whip in his hand standing behind Dr B R Ambedkar who was then the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution. The purpose of the cartoon was to draw attention to the long and inordinate delay in the drafting of the Constitution. Of course another more contemporary reading of the cartoon is possible in these post-colonial times. A high caste man like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru whip in hand is threatening the Dalit leader, Dr B R Ambedkar. I must say that Dr B R Ambedkar stood miles above Jawarlal Nehru in intellectual stature and showing Ambedkar sitting on a snail with Nehru behind him holding a whip can be construed today as demeaning depiction though this was not the intention of the cartoon when it was published more than six decades back.
I can understand our illiterate MPs shouting in Parliament as they were interested in diverting the attention from more important issues. However, the Indian public intellectual and academics do not come off too well in the episode either. A few years back when Arjun Singh was the Education Minister the NCERT books prepared during the NDA Administration were "detoxified" meaning that an ideologically tinged view of history and politics was introduced in the writing of the textbooks. Excecutive intervention was sought by the like of Yogender Yadava, Romila Thapar and K N Panikar to rid the textbooks of what they in their personal opinion considered "saffron" version of history. Having allowed the state to intervene in the process of textbook creATION, NOW THEY CANNOT CRY FOUL. Kapil Sibal immediately announced the removal of the offending cartoon and constituted another sarkari committee to whet the remaining textbooks.
The Indian academic must learn that he or she cannot be selective in dealing with the students and the curriculum. Having allowed the Government to intervene in the process of textbook writing and using political muscle to mandate a point of view that is closely related to the Congress perception of politics and society, the affected academics cannot now declare that academic freedom is being curtailed. Academic freedom was lost the day the govenrment starts appointing its henchmen to write textbooks and makes men like Yogender Yadava the demi god of a dsicipline.
