Writing Initiatives

A cartoon shared by a Twitter user, signed only with the artist tag ‘Noor’, depicts a haunting image: PM Modi stands addressing a crowd, microphone in hand. The cord snakes behind him and a farmer has fashioned a noose from it to hang himself. Again, there is the same turning of the back from the PM. The cartoon clears that the bells and whistles rung are to distract us from what is happening behind the scenes. The fanfare covering up farmer’s voices becomes the weapon of crime. Over 4000 people liked this image on Twitter, and 6000 retweeted it. Without any words or captions, this image resonated simply through a shared context and timeliness. It implicated those in power without saying anything.

In traditional print media, political cartoons work in tandem with an editorial or text, but with the internet landscape, these images are shared without that supporting context. It is assumed that the person engaging with the work will understand the references, as they are in our internet stratosphere, which often works as an echo chamber, curating feeds to reflect personal beliefs. Within the late-stage attention economy shaped by easy, consumable news bites and Instagram infographic culture, political cartoons are already cut to size.^[7] As such, political cartoonists such as Noor can disseminate their work without the reliance on mainstream print culture and receive immediate engagement and response. In the image-proliferated internet, the political cartoon lives as its own entity as opposed to a supplemental point to a written text.

The role of political cartoons is diagnostics, not remedy. By nature, cartoons exaggerate certain details and make wry comments to convey the heart of the issue. For those who are clued into the conversation, are able to make the connections or at least understand the sentiment. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I would like to return to the Orijit Sen image: the statement Sen is making, of calling Modi a fascist, likening him to infamous Mussolini, is certainly not spoken in isolation. However, the quippy nature of the comment as well as the dichotomy of the image from the persona of the PM (in a kurta and a vest) makes Sen’s cartoon a mainstay in memory. Within the context of the cartoons by the other artists, as well as from lived context, the parallel Sen is drawing does not seem so farfetched. By and large, the role political cartoons play in dissent is to expose the truths about their subject by making them larger than life. Where an editorial examines a situation, propose ideas, and explanations; political cartoons instead act as catalysts to bring to light the reader’s own understandings of the context. In that sense, an editorial can be looked at as a window where a political cartoon serves as a mirror. It pushes the reader to lean in look closer. Under that magnified gaze, readers of the cartoon are able to see the myth-making at work – as Acharya, Ponnappa, and Noor clearly point out, the myth being crafted about Modi is his negligence. It is the refusal of the demands of the country’s people in favor of international corporate interests. The point of political cartoons is to channel anger through a pen, to see the characters through the eyes of the artist, and to do something. They are a call to action.