South Asia Citizens Web

It is profoundly distressing that all of India’s political parties joined hands to condemn an inoffensive cartoon published in 1949 about Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s pivotal role in the making of the nation’s constitution. The cartoon, reproduced in a Class XI textbook published in 2006 by the National Council for Educational Training and Research (NCERT), showed Ambedkar riding a snail depicting the constitution and Prime Minister Nehru standing behind him with a whip in hand.

Renowned anthropologist and feminist scholar Leela Dube passed away at her residence in Delhi on 20 th May. She was 89. Fondly called Leeladee, Prof. Dube was one of the pioneers of feminist scholarship in India

If publicly expressed sentiments are going to govern the censorship of each line, picture or cartoon, no text will ever get written. What the present controversy has done is strengthened the stranglehold of the Ministry on textbooks, invaded academic freedom and displayed political cowardice.

Appeasement is the hallmark of a weak state and dithering leadership. Once again, Pakistan is showing its helplessness in the face of those who carry guns and bombs. For a country alleged to have the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal, this is surely ironical.

We have been watching with deep dismay the events as they have unfolded on the floor of the Indian Parliament and outside. Uproar against an individual cartoon has now snowballed into a wide-ranging attack against the new NCERT textbooks. The office of one of the Advisors of the Political Science textbooks has been ransacked, the Political Science textbooks have been withdrawn from circulation, and the Government has resolved to conduct an inquiry into the role of those who sanctioned the inclusion of the offending material in the textbooks. Clearly what is at stake here is not just the life of cartoons on the pages of school textbooks.