Cartoon Crackdown: Don't they pose questions in student minds?

After a cartoon of Dr BR Ambedkar was deemed offensive, a Parliamentary forum on children has now raised objections to other cartoons in textbooks, including one by eminent cartoonist RK Laxman, saying it could cause an erosion of faith in politicians and democracy among the youth. The Parliamentary forum, which consists of 40 members, met with senior National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) to express their objection on cartoons in the the political science textbooks meant for classes IX to XII, the Indian Express reported . A letter written to one of the supervisors of the NCERT textbooks said that the MPs felt the cartoons showed disrespect to them and depict them in a poor light and sought that the offending cartoons should be taken out of textbooks and their distribution be stopped. [caption id=“attachment_308205” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal has said a committee has been formed to look into offending political cartoons. AP”] [/caption] And what are the the offending cartoons? One of them is by Padma Vibhushan awardee RK Laxman, which in the first panel shows politicians begging for votes before elections and the second panel shows people begging for services after the election results are announced. “It does not depict the reality and should not be part of any textbook”, the MPs reportedly said at the meeting. Union Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal on 10 May had said the distribution of textbooks featuring the cartoon of Ambedkar would be halted and said a committee has been set up to examine all cartoons in textbooks and will ensure it is taken out. However, Yogendra Yadav, one of the chief advisors to the NCERT after the Ambedkar cartoon controversy, has said the incident may be the beginning of a rollback of a change in writing textbooks that took place between 2005 and 2008 and brings into question the autonomy being granted to bodies like the NCERT. In an editorial in the Indian Express , Yadav says that many MPs are not comfortable with the depiction of post-Independence political history in the textbooks and the Amebedkar controversy may just be a front to rake up the issue. Acknowledging that there is limited scope to explore freedom on expression in textbooks, Yadav says there is a danger the textbooks may cease creating questions in the minds of students and such political pressure only deters future text book writers from including anything vaguely contentious:

The danger is psychological. Just think of the message such an incident sends to any future textbook writer. You cannot blame them for looking at every passage, every image, every drawing to ensure they have eliminated the possibility of giving rise to any offence to any group that may exist then or in future.The worst form of censorship is the one that lies in the mind of the author.

Yadav says that by protesting in Parliament and attacking the office of another NCERT advisor Suhas Palshikar, Dalit leaders have not only fuelled existing prejudices against them and their demands could only end up “deifying Ambedkar into an empty symbol, worse than any caricature”.