Ritu Gairola Khanduri, author of Caricaturing Culture in India, is a historian and anthropologist. An Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Texas, Arlington, she is also the curator of an exhibition featuring the works of renowned cartoonist Enver Ahmed at the Indian Institute of Cartoonists, Bengaluru. The exhibition is on till 5th of August.
Ritu Gairola Khanduri’s book Caricaturing Culture in India. | Photo Credit: HANDOUT E MAIL
Ms. Khanduri spoke to The Hindu on the exhibition, the changing landscape of cartoons, and the future of editorial cartoons.
‘While growing up, I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist and had noticed Chandu the Chowkidar (a series of comic strips by Enver Ahmed.)‘ | Photo Credit: HANDOUT E MAIL
Tell us about this exhibition and your research on cartoonist Enver Ahmed
Caricaturing Culture in India was my first book for which I’ve been doing research since 2002. Enver Ahmed’s works caught my attention during this research and have intrigued me ever since.
While growing up, I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist and had noticed Chandu the Chowkidar (a series of comic strips by Enver Ahmed.) That was one way I experienced Enver Ahmed’s work early on, and it remained embedded in my memory.
Later, when I got interested in the history of cartooning and started researching it supported by a Fulbright award, I spoke to several senior cartoonists such as Kutti and Bireshwar who mentioned Enver Ahmed’s works. When I visited the National Herald archives, I chanced upon Enver Ahmed’s works again, in the form of advertisements.
I also came across correspondence between Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the home minister of the interim government in 1947, and then Viceroy A.P. Wavell, where they discussed the need to be more attentive to news reporting and the potential role of the press in instigating communal violence. They seemed concerned about how the public would interpret and use newspaper reports and cartoons during the months leading to the Partition.
The cartoons they were scrutinizing were by Mr. Ahmed in Hindustan Times and Mr. Ajmal Husain in Dawn. These were two rival newspapers of rival ideologies.
Essentially, I kept bumping into Enver Ahmed and realised his long career and significant contribution to cartooning in India deserved more attention.
I’ve been collecting material on Ahmed over the years, and have been planning to bring his world and his character Chandu to the public through a collaborative process, engaging the public and in a public humanities context.
This exhibition is an of several long months of research and the first iteration in a series of Ahmed exhibitions that I will keep building on.
Why was Bengaluru chosen as the venue for the exhibition?
The Indian Cartoon Gallery of the Indian Institute of Cartoonists (IIC) in Bengaluru, for many years, has been showcasing works for the public to educate them about the rich history and the current practice of cartooning. That’s a real service for cartoon literacy.
I have been meeting cartoonists for almost two decades and visited Bengaluru to interview Mr. V. G. Narendra when I noticed his cartoons while studying the famous Shankar’s Weekly. Mr. V. G. Narendra has overseeing IIC since his retirement from cartooning. This led me to the IIC and its gallery. I first visited the gallery in 2009.
We’ve been talking about bringing my research here. As a cultural anthropologist researching on cartooning in India, it is important to share my research at the Indian Institute for Cartooning and beyond, and given its visual nature, the exhibition format does justice to cartoons; it is more inviting of a broader audience and makes it participatory.
I have titled the exhibition ‘The Cartoonist Who Belonged to All,’ so that it talks more about belongingness rather than divisiveness. We need to look at the past to understand the present. Both the historian and anthropologist in me felt that the works of Enver Ahmed would be a good way to bring about this kind of engagement.
Political satire has taken many more forms and is not just newspaper cartoons anymore. For example, today there is a thin line between memes and cartoons. What are your thoughts on these? What other changes have you observed from your interactions with cartoonists over the years?
We do see political satire taking on new forms like memes which invites the public to be creators. It’s a very interesting thing that the public is no more just receiving but is becoming producers. As somebody who has been looking at political satire, I’m intrigued by what happens when the public becomes the producers of satires.
One of the earlier shifts that happened in cartooning was when it got digitised and cartoons in colour became more widely published. It kind of changed the way cartoonists worked—from easel to a digital surface.
For example, digitisation had an impact on the hand-eye movement among cartoonists. Instead of looking at the page and hand, the cartoonist was now looking up at the screen and drawing with a digital pen. I came to learn of this from cartoonist Manjul.
It’s interesting to see that there is a generation of digital native cartoonists. Digital has allowed cartoons to reach wider audiences and not just newspaper readers.
But the other side is that it also reaches audiences who can appropriate the cartoon and interpret it in ways not intended by the cartoonist. There’s a sentiment of offence or hurt and then the cartoonist has to unexpectedly engage with it.
Accessibility to cartoons and their creators would seem a welcome shift from past days, but it also makes the cartoonists vulnerable. We continue to witness social media mobbing of cartoonists, trolling and orchestrated responses to critical views.
This is happening in many places. It is one thing to be under threat by the state. Then there is the threat from the people. These are very different dynamics, and then where does the cartoonist turn to?
It is not to say that cartoonists were not opposed in Enver Ahmed’s days. In fact, it is known that Ahmed left for England briefly when he received threats in India for his cartoons. But the kind of intensity and scale with which it is happening now is of another degree.
The contempt case against cartoonist Rachita Taneja is a prime example. When the cartoonist is questioned through dialogue, that is fine. But when something like a court case is filed and social media harassment ensues, it gives rise to questions such as how the youth today perceive cartoons, what is the power of cartoons as well as the purpose of complaints against cartoons.
Those are some of the complexities of cartooning in India and globally too.
How can it be countered?
Cartoon literacy in terms of how you read satire and how you respond to it is very important. I want to be optimistic about it.
There should be public literacy about the place of satire and why it is important for us to be educated about cartoons. That’s what galleries like the Indian Cartoon Gallery do. The exhibitions at the Cartoon Gallery demonstrate our long tradition of satire.
Cartoonists satirising politics need to be seen within a professional context. It’s their role to amplify, reveal and educate through their work the contradictions in the system. It is their role to talk about social justice. When you are taking away that role you are taking away an important voice in our politics, a voice that informs us.
Cartoonists are not there just to entertain us. Laughing at power is very dangerous. Laughter creates community and belonging through a shared knowledge of social truths. And that’s why those in power want to shut it down.
If people are aware of the history of cartooning, they can appreciate cartooning today and understand where it is coming from and where it can go forward.
Are cartoonists as a group shrinking?
Traditions like newspaper cartoonists may be taking on a different form, but there may be other platforms where cartooning may find its audience. Editorial cartoonists are becoming difficult to sustain. It may be because the format of political cartooning is expanding toward social media platforms and the newspaper space is shrinking.
Another reason is the shift in newspaper culture and how newspaper proprietors view their products. But I don’t think cartooning and satire getting eliminated. Each challenge is an opportunity. Censorship is generative too. It brings more attention to the censored material. Complaining against cartoons, for example, is more generative of it.
The nature of jokes has been changing. What was earlier a joke may not be perceived as one today. Does that make this a critical juncture for humour and satire?
Will we stop laughing? No. Society is evolving, and cartoonists are part of that society. So, humour and cartoonists also evolve as part of our changing ethos and world views. Humour is not restricted to certain tried and tested ways. It’s a creative process. Cartoonists are responding to the changing times.
An important thing to be noted is that there are only a few women political cartoonists. So, just like in any other area of knowledge production, in cartoons too, when there is diversity among knowledge producers, you will get a diversity of knowledge. A whole range of humour, styles and satire will come to the fore.
‘Society is evolving, and cartoonists are part of that society. So, humour and cartoonists also have to evolve.’ | Photo Credit: HANDOUT E MAIL
