Cartoon From the Past


We continue to be a nation that takes offence at everything. And as usual, freedom of speech is what suffers. The latest instance is the decision to remove a cartoon of BR Ambedkar from all school books. The cartoon was drawn in 1949. It took our take-offence-at-everything brigade 63 years to take offence!

And what was this cartoon that was so offensive? It shows Ambedkar sitting on a snail and holding a whip. The caption on the snail reads “Constitution”. Behind the snail stands Nehru holding another whip. Any normal person would interpret the cartoon as an indicator of the pace at which the constitution was being drafted.

But not to the representatives of the downtrodden. They have now woken up and demanded that all NCERT books be purged of all such offensive material. And of course, the Congress government has caved in.

Well done, Congress! A cartoon should be higher priority than, I don’t know, combating inflation or corruption or terrorism. In any case, suppressing freedom of speech is in the DNA of the Congress from the Indira Gandhi era.

Even in the context of education, aren't there more important things on which money could be spent? Like building schools, providing mid-day meals, or use it for RTE. But no, our MP's, including the Grand Censor of the Internet, Kapil Sibal, would rather spend the money on reprinting entire books. Call me dumb, but wouldn't that force kids to buy the new book, money that many kids could have saved by reusing old books? But hey, who cares about education? Certainly not Sibal, that's for sure.

Comments

  1. KumarMay 21, 2012 at 9:26 PM

    Sad, our politicians are pushing the limit further each day, in terms of spending time and energy only on matters, which are of no consequence to nation's health and progress. Whipping up emotive mindlessness by people with defective brain goes on and on; it is quickly followed by ruling politicians caving in to every single emotive nonsense! Isn't it true that we do not have a single political leader today who cares for the nation, not one - all politicians are fully engrossed in taking care of themselves, while telling blatant lies day in and day out, "I care for you people. I care for this nation. etc." Actually we haven't had a real leader for decades now.

    Part of the blame for this sorry state goes to the people of this nation. We do not get politicians of caliber because we do not deserve them; if we, as people, have the attitude to demand good governance, nothing would have come in the way of that. We are ever willing to be taken for a ride - naturally we deserve to be deceived. The state of UP, for example, has more members in the legislative council who have criminal records or criminal cases pending against them than people without criminal record/on-going cases. UP people see nothing wrong in that! People shrug their shoulders with "What if thieves, fraudsters, rapists, murderers etc. are our lords and rulers! Fail to see what is the difficulty!" People of other states are indifferent to similar situations in their domain too.

    Maybe the situation is not sad (as I said in the beginning) really. If we sink low, and then continue to sink lower and lower, a day has to come when the sinking will stop and the upward thrust will occur. Who knows, we may start getting better quality politicians some time in future! Hope it happens soon enough, because we are tending towards becoming a "failed democracy". May rise of statesmen happen before our governance collapses beyond redemption.

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