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India: perhaps it is time to have a ministry against cartoons

21 May 2012

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The Daily Mail (UK)

Sibal took the cake in toon row

by Rajeev Dhavan

20 May 2012

Blessed with a ministry of information, perhaps it is time to have a ministry against cartoons.

In time it will be called ’Mac’; and as it grows and grows it will become Big-Mac. The task of Big-Mac will be huge.

It will have many committees and sub-committees to examine every joke that finds print.

Cartoon controversy: Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal is embroiled in the latest cartoon controversy

Mr Sibal will head Big-Mac demonstrating speaking skills and political self-defence.

The latest cartoon controversy shows the Constitution as a snail.

Ambedkar and Nehru are trying to make it move faster, (one with a whip and other by riding on it); Sibal’s explanations befitted the Big- Mac approach.

Sibal got a complaint. He examined it. Then an expert committee.

He then wrote to NCERT in whose textbook the cartoon had been placed for Class XI students. NCERT established a committee. Then Sibal called for all the books and examined them himself. Perhaps, with another informal committee.

Then, Sibal went over the top. It was no longer a question of examining Dalit sensitivity about Nehru’s whip as Ambedkar rides a snail.

Sibal went further and proclaimed finding ’many such cartoons which are objectionable.’ He then decided ’to set up a committee to look into all textbooks. I told NCERT to stop distribution of all books immediately.’

What a strange exercise of ministerial responsibility! A committee to examine. Another committee to re-examine. A ban. Withdrawal of all textbooks. And then, a further committee or committees to examine the issue.

Amidst political selfprotection, came the insistent threat: ’I … found there were many other such cartoons about other leaders which are objectionable.’

This is the ominous part. Which are these cartoons? Were these objectionables chosen by Sibal or the committee?

This ’Sibal’ list of objectionable cartoons should be published. Significantly, the ’snail’ cartoon has not been banned. In fact, it has won publicity it never enjoyed over the past 60 years.

It was published on August 28, 1949 in Shankar’s Weekly, when discussions in the Constituent Assembly were going on.

Nehru had very little to do with the making of the Constitution. He helped convert the Karachi Resolution of 1931 into the Objectives Resolution.

He spoke occasionally.

Even in the major debate on ’property’, it was Munshi who replied on his behalf. Especially after the Draft Constitution of February 1948, Ambedkar steered the Constitution with learning, wisdom, tact and humour.

It was a gigantic task. Ambedkar was more than equal to the task. The discussions had started in late December 1946. Nehru was impatient.

Ambedkar brought the snail home. Does it require a multiplicity of committees to interpret Shankar’s depiction of Nehru’s impatience and Ambedkar steering the Constitution through last-minute amendments?

Without Ambedkar, our Constitution making may well have failed - like that of neighbouring Pakistan.

Ambedkar was a constitutional genius - thinker, architect and a heroic activist. He constantly reminded Dalits not to surrender their struggle to others.

It was not just the business of Pranab Mukherjee but all political parties to calm Dalit sensitivities about the cartoon. Sibal was intently playing out his tragedy of the three committees.

He could have asked his committee to add a line in the textbook: ’Dalits object to this cartoon? What do you think?’

But his policy statement was that cartoons making fun of other political leaders will also be excised from the minds of ’class XI’, 16 year-olds.

Sibal expanded the debate to a policy to protect all political leaders from cartoons. Even though the cartoon itself has been censored only from textbooks, it led to a physical ransacking of Suhas Palshikar’s office.

After Sibal’s retreat, all the parties closed ranks to support the excision of this cartoon.

What the government has used is not its statutory censorship powers but its copyright and control over NCERT textbooks.

Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav have resigned from the NCERT textbook committees.

Since the Emergency there have been controversies over textbooks - saffronisation, left wing-ism and so on. In Aruna Roy’s case, the Supreme Court upheld ’Hindutva’ as worthy of textbook inclusion as part of Indian culture.

But what is Sibal’s ministry going to do now? Textbook writing cannot be left to the whims of antagonists- M.M. Joshi and Arjun Singh.

Sibal should have defended the distinguished textbook group trying to put together texts on the politics and history of a complex nation.

If publicly expressed sentiments are going to govern the censorship of each line, picture or cartoon, no text will ever get written.

Sibal and his political mentors should have stood their ground by defending a 63 year-old cartoon which neither Nehru nor Ambedkar objected to; and placed their response in the politics of explanation and understanding not censorship.

Finally, we come to the question of the test for censorship. The broad constitutional test is reasonableness.

Government action must be reasonable. This is too ambiguous. But does that mean every sensitivity against a publication must lead to the red pencil of the censor?

The more exacting test in matters of speech is the ’clear and present danger’ to the free speech of the nation. It is on this that our democracy is founded.

Every act of censorship cannot be tested in the courts of law. Some controversies belong to the floor of parliament.

What the present controversy has done is strengthened the stranglehold of the Ministry on textbooks, invaded academic freedom and displayed political cowardice.

Rajeev Dhavan is a Supreme Court lawyer

Source URL: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2147199/RAJEEV-DHAVAN-Sibal-took-cake-toon-row.html#ixzz1vY5Rwn1B

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P.S.

The above article from The Daily Mail is reproduced here educational and non commercial use