Abstract
Just like any other narrative form, cartoons too, by virtue of their storytelling ability, have problematized Dalit life history and delineated the trauma, tragedy and unflinching representational terms. Charting sociopolitical topics, cartoons are an example of popular culture influencing public opinion. With caricature, prose, topical content and a dash of humour, cartoons form a special category of news and a critical form of political journalism. When Elizabeth Edwards discusses the raw history and potential of photographs, she emphasizes their visual sovereignty, which is not only vital for the production of photography but also for the interpretation of images, and through them, the insertion of the human voice. Similarly, cartoons succeed in combining their visual sovereignty with their ethnographic potential because of their interpretive ingenuousness. As such, cartoons articulate lines of instability indiscernible under the garb of mythical solidarity of a myriad of political ideologies. Cartoonists construct publics and counter publics by problematizing the impact of sociopolitics on human beings through the construction of interpretative communities bound by visual perceptions. In other words, cartoons, particularly political cartoons, represent highly complex modern attempts to formulate visual identities under specific historical and political conditions that resonate with the readership. The present research article seeks to problematize Dalit representation in cartoons by non-Dalit illustrators against the work of a Dalit cartoonist to critically study the politics of representation, the discourse of powers and the dialectics of caste. The article seeks to study if and how Dalit agency is, respectively, illustrated or elided, how symbols and caricatures demonstrate the truth of Dalit life and the aesthetics of the Dalit experience. For the purpose of the study, the article especially focusses on the figure of Ambedkar, the iconic Dalit voice and the benevolent patriarch of Dalit ideology, and studies his representation in a series of political cartoons published between 1932 and 1956.
Introduction
While it is true that upon reading Dalit literature, one is overwhelmed with an endless stream of images and reflections, which awakens one to the true meaning of the psychosomatic trauma and violence integral to Dalit/subaltern marginalization in the Indian subcontinent, nevertheless, even with the mediation of literary texts, the experience of Dalit life requires continual problematization through newer models to comprehend the contours of subaltern life experiences in a politically volatile cultural economy. In fact, considering the dynamism of Dalit issues as reflected in contemporary music (hip-hop and rap), cinema, dance, graphic novels and other forms of art, it becomes unequivocally apparent that a homogenous study of only one art form is insufficient to address the dynamism of real-life Dalit issues. As an illustration of the point, one may refer to Vipin Tatad’s rap music as a performance of cultural resistance, or, for that matter, Telegu–English writer, Aruna Gogulamanda’s New Indian Dalit poetry:
She was told That she was dirt, She was filth and In this sacred land of thousands of goddesses She is called a Dalit.—as pieces underlining the exhaustive disjunction in Dalit women’s lives perpetrated by an interminable caste system.
Such newer art forms defiantly overcompensate for Dalit resignation and passivity. Here, it is important to remember that the Caste System, more than anything else, teaches the Dalits resignation. Resignation to Brahmin patriarchy, to caste discrimination; for women, renunciation of bodily ownership; for male members, abandonment of ‘male protest’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 59)—in essence, postulation to the casteist sociocultural and economic praxis. The fallacy of this whole caste-based equation is problematized in myriad newer art forms by Dalit artists, and as such, we need a multidisciplinary and non-binary approach in Dalit studies to broaden our knowledge base, contextualize new research with existing work and in general add dimension to the field to study.
Cartoons Representing Dalit Lives
Just like any other narrative form, cartoons too, by virtue of their storytelling ability, have problematized Dalit life history and have delineated the trauma, tragedy and unflinching representational terms and nuanced subtexts. For example, the following cartoons by Ambedkarite cartoonist, Unnamati Syama Sundar, problematize the reality of Dalit life, commemorate Dalit history (Figure 1) and dramatize Dalit freedom of speech (Figure 2) by actively representing the caste-based social field and its forms of repression. The Dalit, forced to manual scavenging, caustically hitting back at the Brahmin’s caste-based legislation in Figure 3 illustrates a subaltern response/rebuttal to a larger sociocultural narrative that is often conspicuous by its absence in mainstream discourses.
The present research article seeks to problematize Dalit representation in cartoons by non-Dalit illustrators against the work of a Dalit cartoonist to critically study the politics of representation, the discourse of power and the dialectics of caste. The article seeks to study if and how Dalit agency is, respectively, illustrated or elided, how symbols and caricatures demonstrate the truth of Dalit life and the aesthetics of the Dalit experience.
Aim and Method
The article seeks to unpack the representational politics of India’s leading publications through a study of cartoons drawn by such eminent illustrators as Shankar, Ahmed and R. K. Laxman among others. I perform this study by directing attention exclusively to the figure who appears somewhat inconsistently in the English-language press, between 1932 and 1956, B. R. Ambedkar, Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political leader, and a perpetual detractor of Congress’ sarvarna majoritarianism, and like Jinnah, one of the ‘intractable figure[s] of opposition to [congress’]…view of state’ (Kamra, 2003, p. 2). The article aims to problematize the Dalit history and life experiences through a study of Dr Ambedkar’s representation. Such a study is imperative to first illustrate how Dalits have been violently excluded, demeaned and derided in the public sphere; second, how that history can be recast in a newer version in the light of new Dalit art forms that question and contest the tyranny of the caste system.
Method
Theoretically inclined toward the idea that ‘Dalit history illustrates and enables connections with global histories of racism and social exclusion’ (Agarwal, 2016) the article seeks to understand if Dalit history is best problematized, represented and signified when it is drafted by the people of the untouchable community themselves. In keeping with this idea, the article examines pre-existing caste-based paradigms and is divided into two parts. The first part of the article discusses the representational tactics used by non-Dalit cartoonists to depict Ambedkar during his active years, while the second part discusses representations of Ambedkar by the Dalit cartoonist Unnamati Syama Sundar. The results of both are then compared and conclusions are drawn from them.
Dalit: A Name and a Category
‘Dalit is a Sanskrit word which means ‘oppressed’ and ‘downtrodden’. It was appropriated in the 1970s by ‘untouchable’ writers and activists to describe their community, both in the present and in historical contexts’ (Agarwal, 2016). Etymologically connected with the Sanskrit root of the word dal, signifying, cracking, splitting and tearing apart, the word Dalit is gender-inclusive, and in the words of A. P. Nirmal, the pioneering voice of Dalit theology, refers to the (1) the broken, the torn, the rent, the burst, the split; (2) the opened the expanded; (3) the bisected; (4) the driven asunder, the dispelled, the scattered; (5) the downtrodden, the crushed, the destroyed; and (6) the manifested, the displayed’ (Patta, 2015).
Although not a caste, but a ‘constructed identity’ (Bharati, 2002) Dalits are ‘[u]ntouchables, [who are] usually known by degrading names such as Chamar, Mahar, Mang, and Paraiyar, were dehumanized by the caste Hindu order’ (Rao, 2009).
Dr Ambedkar as Dalit Messiah
Studies on Dalit identity show that a new identity is emerging, one that ‘determined that the Dalits will not acquiesce forever with their subordinate position’ (Bharati, 2002) and one figure who has inspired Dalits to consider themselves in dignified terms and reject ‘the sub-human status imposed on them by Hindu social order’ (Bharati, 2002) is that of Dr Ambedkar. The icon of the community, Dr Ambedkar, who headed several Dalit protests including the important Mahad Satyagraha, which culminated with the burning of the Manusmriti, was and still continues to be the ultimate signifier of Dalit agency and identity. As a consequence, Dr Ambedkar is represented in a myriad of Dalit creative-critical works that celebrate his legacy and commemorate his inclusive ideology. In fact, when commenting on the dialectics of Dalit life reality, the caste question especially, Ambedkar’s image, recurs as the ultimate symbol categorizing the questions and concerns of marginal existence by Dalits and non-Dalits alike.
A Case for Political Cartoons
One picture is worth ten thousand words.
—Chinese Proverb
Sukeshi Kamra in her excellent study of the political cartoons featuring Mohammed Ali Jinnah points out that ‘while letters to the editors, articles, aphorisms, gossip columns are lively indeed, and obsessively political, editorial cartoons surpass these forums of opinion in their wrestling with a vexed political process by recoursing to heavily inflammatory visual rhetoric’(Kamra, 2003, p. 1). Furthermore, Victor Navasky states that ‘far from trivial, under certain circumstances cartoons and caricatures have historically had and continue to have a unique emotional power and capacity to enrage, upset, and discombobulate otherwise rational people and groups and drive them to disproportionate-to-the-occasion, sometimes violent, emotionally charged behavior (sic)’ (Navasky, 1993, p. 19). As such, considering that ‘[t]he powers that images can release are unpredictable’ (Danto quoted in Navasky, 1993, p. 76) not so say uncontrollable, we can very well conclude that when it comes to political cartoons and caricatures, their major is to communicate and this it does by ‘by tapping into familiar cultural constructs’ (Edwards quoted in Kamra, 2003, p. 2).
Ambedkar versus Gandhi: A War of Representation
An assessment of the nationalist historiography of India suggests it is significantly confining in the figure of Mahatma Gandhi, whose overarching presence in the official annals of the country is visible in conjunction with Nehru and other scions of the Congress party. Furthermore, literature prescribed by the ‘government and newspaper culture of the decades leading to India’s independence’ (Kamra, 2003, p. 1) as well as the ‘editorial policy of newspapers’ (Kamra, 2003) ideologically inclined toward the dominant Congress [read Hindu majoritarian] view attest to an analogous representation. In this context, what is interesting is how the press as a transmitter of information used visual rhetoric, often polemical, sometimes highly provocative, to communicate their political position. And, in the process, the figure who ‘almost as a rule’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 27) was portrayed ‘negatively … [in the] ‘nationalist’ Indian press’ (Sundar, 2019) is that of Ambedkar.
It is important to mention here that Ambedkar has never been a substitute for Gandhi: he was treated by ‘newspapers of his time and historians and textbook writers [subsequently] – as an untouchable’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 34-5), while Gandhi, largely looked upon as ‘Mahatma-the Great Soul’ (Khanduri, 2014, p. 88), forms a distinctive category unto himself in Indian (and world) politics. Often depicted alone, in the company of his thoughts and bolstered by his non-violent ideology, Gandhi largely enjoyed active sponsoring and support by major newspapers of his time and in subsequent years.
Consider, for example the following cartoons. In the first illustration, the visual rhetoric directs our attention to the easy association of Gandhi as the reflection of the national signifier, the much tormented, yet bold and virtuous Bharatmata (Figure 4), while in the latter (Figure 5), we observe him as the flag bearer of the freedom of speech. In contrast, ‘caricatures of [Ambedkar] all too frequently replace one idiom of prejudice with another, [with] casteist slur sliding into easy sexism of the cartoonist’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 41). Often infantilized, or shown ‘as a woman who sleeps around’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 41), Ambedkar is frequently derided in the nationalist press. Please consider the cartoon titled ‘Open to Engagement’ (Figure 6), which, apart from its troubled gender politics, also exhibits a subtext of political turmoil heightened by Ambedkar’s indecision and pride.
The politics of representation and the representation of politics have always existed; history is full of examples. While the representational path marked out for Gandhi leads to a demigod-like direction, Ambedkar’s appearance in nationalist public press is a contested zone despite the fact that ‘along with Gandhi, it was Ambedkar who was truly a mass leader of his time’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 34). The lack of appreciation for Ambedkar’s role as a human rights representative for the depressed classes, his numerous endeavours, political and otherwise, to overhaul their situation become more conspicuous by their absence in the nationalist press when one studies him against the representation of Gandhi as the national metaphor of ideal political signifier.
However, the issue here is not only the large-scale elision of Ambedkar’s contribution to Indian history but also the ridiculing of the contingencies that beset the depressed classes that we see represented in a number of political cartoons deriding him. In fact, it is sad to see ‘the heavy burden of misery’ (‘Death-Doomed March’, Kharat), the trauma, the despair that make Dalits cry out ‘Do I want to be born at all in this land’ (‘To be or not to be born’, Rokhade) used in the nationalist press, especially in the editorial cartoons from 1932 to 1956, for elite entertainment.
If we accept that ‘[t]he visible world is arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God’ (Berger, 2008, p. 16) the popular peddling and enjoyment of such problematic representation relating to Ambedkar in general and the untouchable/Dalit community, in particular, becomes more awkward because it shows a popular nonchalance toward the rights and socioeconomic and cultural situation of the depressed classes, especially Dalits. In such a situation, a repudiation of the nationalist historiographical apparatus by dismantling its normative structure of political representation is imperative. Theoretically aligned with the idea that Ambedkar’s ‘appearance gives us an opportunity to reflect on what easily gets left out of history’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 40), the article seeks to unpack the representational politics of India’s leading publications through a study of cartoons drawn by eminent illustrators such as Shankar, Ahmed and R. K. Laxman among others. I perform this study by directing attention exclusively to the figure who appears somewhat inconsistently in the English-language press, between 1932 and 1956, B. R. Ambedkar, Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political leader, and a perpetual detractor of Congress’ sarvarna majoritarianism, and like Jinnah, one of the ‘intractable figure[s] of opposition to [congress’]…view of state’ (Kamra, 2003. p. 2).
Ambedkar in Cartoons
An appraisal of the form and content of the Ambedkar cartoons leads us to the socio-psychological and political context of the aggregate of readers who appreciated and enjoyed the illustrations. Here again, we return to Danto who said that
[c]aricature has at times succeeded in putting certain public figures in a light so unflattering that their power has been damaged and even destroyed. It became almost impossible for the French to take Louis Philippe seriously once they saw him through Daumier’s drawings as having the form of a pear—the term connotes stupidity. (Danto quoted in Navasky, 2014, p. 76)
If that be the case, then one wonders if Ambedkar’s caricaturing in Indian publications has in some way fuelled the diminution of his contribution to the Indian public sphere.
The Figure 7 is illuminating in this respect.
No discussion of Ambedkar cartoons can have an effect without consideration of the cartoon titled ‘Indian Constitution at Work’, which depicts Jawaharlal Nehru whipping a snail on which Ambedkar sits. The cartoon published in a textbook prepared by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) caused much controversy in the Indian Parliament in April–May 2012 and was ultimately removed at the behest of Dalit lawmakers. While many savarna critics defended the cartoon, which in their opinion, talks about the slow-paced creation of the Indian constitution helmed by Ambedkar, the casteist subtext of the cartoon features another story. Navasky says that ‘when it comes to satirical portraits of an era, cartoons in particular and images in general tell the story better than the written word because written styles are ever evolving, whereas symbols seem more durable’ (Navasky, 2014, p. 66). If that be the case, and if all visual truths, as John Berger suggests in Ways of Seeing, are orchestrated, then one wonders what story this cartoon narrates.
With Nehru holding the whip his position seems to echo the sentiments of Bapu Patil, the savarna character in Bandhumadhav’s short story, ‘Poisoned Bread’:
Simply because you’ve had a little education, don’t think you can teach me. You should know that god intended to have a definite hierarchy when he created the Brahmin, the Maratha, the fisherman, the weaver, the Mahar-mang, the Dhor, the cobbler in that order. Everyone must abide by this scheme and act accordingly. Put everyman in his proper place as they wisely say. (Bandhumadhav, 1992, p. 169)
Nehru with the upraised whip in hand is a representative of the Brahmin class who denunciates Mahar Ambedkar’s tardiness in the delivery of the constitution and is out to penalize him in a manner common to his position as a savarna Hindu, even today. Further, the whip-holding Nehru’s stance vindicates ‘a promise of power which he embodies’ (Berger, 2008, p. 46), while Ambedkar’s downcast eyes and back exposed to a symbolic and literal beating from Nehru suggests that to be born a Dalit is to be born ‘within an allotted a confined space, into the keeping of’ (Berger, 2008, p. 46) Brahmins. In addition, note the mirroring effect in the cartoon. Both Ambedkar and Nehru are shown as holding whips, but while Nehru’s whip is upright, Ambedkar’s lash is wilted and flaccid suggesting his symbolically castrated social position wherein Dalits are expected to offer up their labour.
Caricaturing Ambedkar
British cartoonist Ted Harrison has a ‘tripartite theory of caricature: ‘There are three things all caricaturists look for: the subject’s DNA (essential bone structures), the subject’s acquired characteristics (obesity, etc.) and the subject’s vanities (Hitler’s moustache would be an example)’ [Navasky, 2014, p. 76]. When caricaturing Ambedkar, however, apart from the aforementioned, what is most maximized, is his caste.
Often depicted as wearing the sacred Brahminic thread (janau) (see Figure 8), Ambedkar is many a time called a modern Manu, an ironical sobriquet, in my opinion because his whole ideology involves the subversion of Manu’s Brahmanical monomania, an issue that dramatized his entire political and social life. The following quotation from Ambedkar’s speech at Mahad Satyagraha (1927) is illustrative in this respect: ‘We must uproot the four-caste system and untouchability, and set the society on the foundation of the two principles of one caste only and of equality…’ (Ambedkar quoted in Giri, 2020, p. 108). Ambedkar who considered the Mahad satyagraha the ‘untouchable liberation movement’ (Giri, 2020) burnt the Manu smriti to commemorate the historical occasion.
Dr Ambedkar’s rise as a national leader and his bitter confrontations with Gandhi all made the early 1930s the most significant period in the history of the Dalit movement. In a politically charged atmosphere following the Poona Pact, which entailed Ambedkar compromising his role as a liberator ‘of the Dalits in India from mental slavery and abject wretchedness’ (Dangle, 1992, p. xxiii) for the sake of Gandhi and the temple entry debate, the following cartoon appeared in the Hindustan Times. A cursory glance at the cartoons suggests its dramatization of Ambedkar’s view of asymmetry latent in the Hindu religion when he said that ‘There can be a better or worse Hindu. But a good Hindu there cannot be’ (Ambedkar qtd in Sundar, 2019, p. 65). Shankar, the cartoonist, however, seems to have an issue with Ambedkar’s idea of Hinduism for in this cartoon he delineates the caste issue in unequivocal terms for his elite readership ‘anxious to be [considered] …by the world community as the generation responsible for bringing India into modernity’ (Kamra, 2003, p. 2). Shankar’s cartoon titled the ‘The Towel, the Tar Brush and the Hammer’ (1933) (Figure 9) seems to be ‘motivated to convince its readership’ (Kamra, 2003) that with people (read Ambedkar and M.K Acharya) ready to malign Hinduism, a problematization of its tenets is not only instrumental, but imperative as well.
In the cartoon, an image of Gandhi can be seen on one side, calm and composed, cleaning a deity (Hinduism) that has been tainted by the untouchability problem. The other side is populated with a visibly agitated M. K. Acharya (an essentialist Brahman sanatanist who opposed temple entry movements, the Child Marriage Restraint Act and Gandhi’s efforts to reform Hinduism).
This cartoon depicts Acharya as tarnishing Hinduism, whereas Dr Ambedkar is depicted clearly as an angry and unhinged man trying to bring down an entire sacred structure frantically by whacking it with a hammer; he is a minor player in the presence of giants such as Gandhi and M. K. Acharya, a man who tries in vain, it seems, to destroy something that is clearly more powerful than himself.
It is worth noticing here that Ambedkar’s body is ‘arranged in the way it is, to display it to the man [reader/spectator] looking at it. The picture is made to appeal to his’ (Berger, 2008, p. 55) understanding of Hinduism. Ambedkar, situated at the margins of the illustration, armed with a hammer, an essential Dalit tool of trade, his stature abated ‘acts as a confirmation and a provokes a very strong sense of relief’ (Berger, 2008, p. 59) which can be explained as a vindication of the of the familiar Hindu patriarchal mechanism.
Placed strategically under the pedestal of Hinduism and deliberately beneath the Sanatanist M. K. Acharya, Ambedkar, Shankar seems to suggest, can never hope to be a binary to Gandhi, who in his opinion is the true leader of the Harijans, forever exerting himself to save his beloved religion from attack from co-religionists with malicious intent. Ambedkar, on the other hand, inept in measuring the parallax to Hinduism, has no idea of the tremendous distance between himself and the religion he criticized. Shankar seems to remind him that his demand for Dalit emancipation from the stringent exclusionary tactics of Hinduism is ‘[f]ull of sound and fury, Signifying nothing’ (Macbeth, William Shakespeare, Act 5, scene 5, lines 16–27) because Hinduism with its magnified proximity with Gandhi, its saviour, it guiltless, benign and consciously democratic.
A Tough Cure for Ambedkar: ‘Medicine Men in Readiness’
The notion of trauma when it concerns Dalit life and livelihood is a contested issue. Officially ‘trauma’ is an event that has a visibly decipherable ‘stressor that would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone’ (Visser), although what institutes a ‘stressor’ is controversial and idiosyncratic. Talking about the impact of trauma, Greg Forte has argued that there are traumas that ‘are so chronic and cumulative, so woven into the fabric of our societies, that they cannot count as shocks’, and therefore become ‘systemic practices and patterns of behaviour’ (Forter, 2007, p. 260). His idea is directly tied to Flanagan’s notion of traumatic history, which ‘implies an extension beyond individuals to a people’ (Flanagan, 2002, p. 390). Their work demonstrates the idea that traumatized individuals suffer traumatic memories, just as traumatized societies construct a common traumatic history that transcends time and space.
The history of caste and untouchability in India and the consideration of Dalit autobiographies and literary pieces demonstrate a significant manifestation of trauma. In this context, it is important to note that Dr Ambedkar in his critical probing of Hinduism (read Castes in India—Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development (1916), Annihilation of Caste (1936) and Who were the Shudras?) has demonstrated that the caste system, which is the most important factor behind when Dalit trauma is concerned, is primary to the structure of the Hindu religion. For him, the caste system, which has degraded and oppressed the depressed classes and traumatized them and their society by an extension (a point unequivocally vindicated by Dalit literature), was a material truth, an anathema, a disease and an ‘infection’ (Dangle, 1992, p. xx).
This idea motivated his position at the Yeola Conference wherein he asked his followers to defenestrate for good the despotic machinery of Hinduism and adopt another religion. Shankar’s patricentric Hindu leaning is evident in the illustration (Figure 10) which etches Ambedkar as an ailing patient surrounded by the scions of different religions ready to attend to his ailment by enrolling him within the folds of their re-spective religions. As the representatives of the different religions offer their ‘help’ Ambedkar is visibly consternated.
One might note the model of humiliation that is at work in the cartoon. While Shankar makes fun of the very reality of Dalit life, he elides any mention/representation of the systematic Hindu oppression that Ambedkar, and by extension the Dalits had endured (and continue to endure, as the daily news reports suggest), which had led him (and other members of his community) to jettison the Hindu religion and reterritorialize their spiritual aspirations. While it is true that the contingencies of such a significant move might be grave. What is most shocking in the subtext of the cartoon is Shankar’s disposition appropriating Hinduism as an axiomatic non-violent cure from other violent religious practices perpetrated by other religions. Ambedkar, in Shankar’s opinion, has not only mis-appreciated the Hindu religion but has also, in his call to relinquish the Hindu faith, developed a catatonic ‘death model’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 329) from which recovery is improbable, if not impossible altogether.
Temple Entry? An Issue, is it?
In an interview with Christian Novetzke, the poet Hira Bansode narrated her experience of entering a temple, which, ironically, her father had helped built. ‘We went inside one by one. But as my turn came, and I was about to enter the temple the priest shouted at me, caught me by the hair, dragged me from the temple entrance, refusing to allow me to enter. I asked why he did this to me. He replied that I was a Mahar’ (Bansode quoted in Novetzke, 1993, p. 279). ‘Such stories of temple entry and their violent repercussions they instigate are common in the Untouchable communities of India’ (Novetzke, 1993). In the case of Dr Ambedkar, the temple entry issue ‘inspired a life of challenging the age old mores of caste and untouchability’ (Novetzke, 1993) and reached its peak with the Kalaram temple entry struggle, which was a key point in Dr Ambedkar’s career intended to mobilize untouchables for their rights. Marked by ‘unprecedented levels of tension, anxiety and uncertainty’ (Kamra, 2003, p. 3), the satyagraha was stopped in 1934 after Dr Ambedkar had lost all hope that upper castes would ever change. However, the issue of Dalit temple entry has always been controversial to the extent that as recently as 2022, we read newspaper reports claiming that Dalits are now allowed to enter a newly built Ram temple in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh (The Hindustan Times, 2022). The panic apparent in the contingency of ‘defile[ment] the holiness of [a] place’ (Novetzke, 1993, p. 279) ostensible in the aforementioned newspaper article is synonymously apparent in cartoons as well. The Savarna point of view narrows down on Ambedkar and he becomes ‘the most represented and overdetermined’ (Kamra, 2003, p. 3) member of the subaltern classes, of who the knowledge of the upper caste cartoonists, including Shankar was equivocal, it seems. The fashion in which Ambedkar is delineated and otherized in a series of cartoons from the 1940s, simply by virtue of caste-based hierarchy, is surprising not to say downright shocking. In the following cartoons we see how in the absence of the requisite condition of humour, it is the religious force inseparable from Savarna caste-related fetish that is dramatized in exaggerated terms. In all these cartoons, Ambedkar is illustrated as the ‘moral if not political loser’ (Sundar, 2019) standing in the side-line, often ignored and forever disrespected. One of the more surprising settings that we see in many of the Ambedkar cartoons is that of a literal or metaphorical temple that the backward classes aspire but often fail to enter.
‘Temple Entry is given to Harijans’ (Figure 11) comments of Dr Ambedkar’s entry to Viceroy Linlithgow’s Executive council as labour member during the crucial time of Britain’s entering the Second World War, when need was felt to ‘mobilise the colonies in war efforts’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 86). The cartoon viciously lampoons Ambedkar, who had said that ‘Brahminism is the poison which has spoiled Hinduism. You will succeed in saving Hinduism if you will kill Brahminism’ (Dr B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, 1936). Far from inflicting injury to the untouchable Mahar for besmirching a sanctified space/ temple, Viceroy Linlithgow/Brahman priest stands next to the temple entry graciously ushering in the same Harijan who had momentously declared during the Kalaram Temple Entry Struggle saying that ‘I have no more use for temple entry. I want the Depressed Classes to concentrate their energy and resource on politics and education and I hope that they will realise the importance of both’ (
The temple entry idea is employed in a synonymous mode in a cartoon that appeared a few years later in Pioneer. Titled ‘By-passed’ the cartoon problematizes the history of the time by showing a dark-skinned Ambedkar being denied entry into the Cabinet Temple by Clement Atlee, caricatured as a Brahmin priest (Figure 12). The racism aside, it seems that the narrative of the previous cartoon is subverted here in that the smartly dressed Ambedkar of the previous illustration is caricatured as a whining infant who is about to throw a tantrum. The depiction of the representatives of the British empire as a Brahmin priests in the respective cartoons vindicates the idea that the Congress Majority and the British are co-religionists and upholders of synonymous political ideology. The visual containment of history, especially at the cusp of India’s Partition is interesting. The cartoon, apparently, seems to satirize Ambedkar’s position in relation to schedule caste representation in the cabinet. During the Shimla Conference he had demanded three seats for the Scheduled castes in the cabinet and as a compromise, had settled for two. When, however, the new proposal for the Interim Government was announced and the Scheduled Castes were given one seat, Ambedkar was visibly incensed and considered the move, ‘a gross breach of a solemn promise given after due deliberations’ (Sundar, 2019, p. 142). The text note: ‘What? No temple entry for Me?’ satirizes the British bypassing of Ambedkar’s wishes. While Churchill, posed as a Brahmin mendicant, looks on, Atlee ignores Ambedkar in an attempt to flee to flee the scene while a fair and lovely Jagjivan Ram, the Scheduled Caste nominee of the Congress Party, attempts to cross the hallowed portals of the Cabinet Temple. Based on its visual strategy, the cartoon emphasizes Ambedkar’s lack of critical acumen and the consequent lack of esteem accorded to his judgment by the political hierarchy.
The Other Side of the Story: Ambedkar in Dalit Cartoons
A study of the cartoons published in English news dailies by non-Dalit cartoons suggests an unequivocal lack of sympathy for the painful reality of Dalit life. The violence of discrimination that subjugates Dalits marginalized them and renders them powerless becomes a conduit for hilarity in these cartoons. The figure of Ambedkar is stripped off of his dignity and self-confidence is unflinching lampooned. Ambedkar’s contribution to Indian political history, his role in the drafting of the constitution, and his general dynamism and scholarship are dismissed as immaterial. In its place, what is given importance is his rotundity, his dalitness. His words are dissected, his Dalit identity is held up for derision in illustrations which infantilize him, perennially shift his gender, transmogrify him, reduce his stature and portray him as man who defenestrates his ideology only too easily.
Perhaps the true nature of Ambedkar’s contribution is best evident in Dalit creative-critical literature and in cartoons by Dalit cartoonists as well. The following cartoon by noted Dalit cartoonist Unnamati Syam Sundar gives Ambedkar agency and identity, conspicuous by their absence in the previously read cartoons which mostly acted as visual propaganda. Ambedkar had always been against vail idolatry and in the cartoon, we see him directing our attention to his material contribution toward the psychological, intellectual, political and social upliftment of the depressed castes (Figure 13). The cartoonist seems to impress upon us that rather than appreciating Ambedkar’s contribution by commemorating him on a special day, it is imperative that we embrace the way of life he suggests and thus bring out the change he had envisioned for us.
The subaltern distinctiveness and the spirit of fraternity that we often read in Dalit poetry like ‘In Our Colony’ by Keshav Meshram is visualized in the following cartoon where the text note critically focuses on the unitarian tendency that bolsters the Dalits (Figure 14). The cartoon suggests that Dalit atrocities would not go unnoticed and if one Ambedkar, the ultimate representative scion of the depressed classes, is insulted or attacked, thousand other representatives of the depressed classes would raise their voices and arms in protest (Figure 15).
Conclusion
In my examination of Ambedkar cartoons in English dailies, I have demonstrated how Dalit representation is rooted in Dalit social experience and the corporeal trauma experienced by the Dalit body is generally elided in such depiction. In fact, I feel that the Ambedkar cartoons in the English language press are problematic in many respects, but mostly because of their determined lack of problematization of Dalit reality. Issues related to poverty, violence, sexploitation, illiteracy, lack of political, socio-cultural and economic representation of Dalits are neglected at best and derided at worst. Any demand for equality put forward by Dr Ambedkar as the ultimate and sole representative of the Dalits is held in sharp relief and ridiculed in unmistakable illustrative prowess. One wonders if such a move is because of the casteist tendencies ingrained in our society that the cartoonists simply use as a major tool for their art, or is it that when Dalits are considered, human treatment, equality and fraternity are ‘stuff as dreams are made on’ (The Tempest, Act 4, William Shakespeare).
In a situation such as this, it is imperative that we resuscitate Dalit historiography by reading a myriad of Dalit creative and critical texts including newer art forms like rap music, Dalit cartoons, films, graphic novels, and so on, as narratives that dynamically dispel subaltern passivity and present Dalits as historical and cultural beings and not as typecasts. It seems that now we need a thorough and continued investigation into Dalit culture through the narratives it produces. For, in the end, any documentation of Dalit history, directly or indirectly, as we see in the case of the cartoons analyzed in the article, loses much of the context and ends up being caricatures of a community that deserves recognition and representation now more than ever.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.