BJP’s cartoon attacks on the Aam Aadmi Party

By Deepak Parvatiyar

February 6, 2015

It may sound presumptuous but it is somewhat less saddening that RK Laxman is no more to see cartooning hitting rock bottom. Had he been alive, the great cartoonist might not have withstood the degradation of an art to the extent it took a shift from satire to acerbic personal attacks, this election season in Delhi.

Consider the “cartoons” from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s stable. In one such cartoon, the Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal was ridiculed for crying for clean politics while at the same time accepting black money for campaigning. But this was not enough. Another cartoon even depicted Kejriwal’s children in a bad taste and even showed Gandhian activist Anna Hazare in a framed photograph with a garland around it.

The AAP chief had tweeted then, “Nathuram Godse killed Gandhiji on this day in 1948. BJP has killed Anna in its ad today…”
Not many even within the BJP could endorse such cartoons. BJP leader and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stepped in and had it withdrawn, insisting on ‘positive’ campaigning.

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Yet, the worse was still to come. Another cartoon surfaced in which the Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal’s ‘gotra’ (caste) was ridiculed as “updravi gotra” (nuisance causing caste). In the cartoon Kejriwal was shown as threatening to disrupt the Republic Day parade one year and asking for a VIP pass for the next year’s parade – a distinct reference to Kejriwal’s dharna on the eve of the Republic Day at Raisina Hill last year when he was Delhi’s Chief Minister, and his publicly expressed displeasure over not being invited to the R-Day parade this year.

The cartoon boomeranged badly on the BJP. The Aam Aadmi Party deftly gave it a political twist by accusing the BJP of insulting the entire Agarwal community (Kejriwal’s ‘gotra’) and demanding an apology.

“I don’t sit on ‘dharnas’ for myself. The BJP targeted my children…I kept quiet, didn’t react… the BJP has been launching personal attacks on me through their ads, but today they referred to the entire Agarwal Samaj as ‘Updravi’,” Kejriwal alleged.

Given the political clout of the Baniyas in Delhi (Agarwal is a sect of the Baniyas), and given the fact that they are traditionally BJP supporters, a hapless BJP had to retract calling it a political metaphor and accusing Kejriwal for “taking sarcasm in the wrong context”.
Yet, isn’t sarcasm the lowest form of wit? Is it fair to make cartoons, which blurs the difference?

Stoop to conquer seems the mantra for success for political parties this election in Delhi. Electioneering is marked with use of foul language more than ever and who should be blamed? With polls becoming personality-centric than remaining issue based, character assassination of rivals was only expected and understandable. Little wonder therefore, that this has been happening without any compunction.

Consider Prime Minister Narendra Modi using term such as “anarchist” and “bazaaru” (a term loosely used for a prostitute) in his election rallies. None of the political parties are missing any opportunity to use foul language. Consider both the BJP and the Congress’s frequent reference to Kejriwal, as “bhagora” (One who ran away from responsibilities).

Not to be left behind, even the AAP could not withdraw from making demeaning statements when it termed the BJP’s last minute CM face, Kiran Bedi, as the BJP’s “scapegoat” and an “opportunist”.

Indeed while the BJP and the Congress are established players in the political firmament, Kejriwal’s AAP is still jostling for political space in this domain with his brand of “clean” politics.  Ironically, in the process, even Kejriwal seems not averse to paying his rivals in their own coin.

The biggest casualty of this political bickering and the intemperate language of the politicians has been none other than the image of a cartoonist as they are now made to look like a saleable commodity.  After all, weren’t cartoonists perceived to be objective? Even commercial cartoons had a fair tinge of objectivity till now. Who can forget the cartoons used in Amul Ads?

Exploring it from yet another dimension, even a politician like Balasaheb Thackeray – himself an eminent cartoonist, avoided caustic personal attacks through cartooning. After all, he and Laxman had shared the same office once, when they together worked as cartoonists in Mumbai’s Free Press Journal.

As for the legendary Laxman, whose satires were as sharp as a needle, he never ridiculed any politician in his cartoons. He was even quoted as saying that “My sketch pen is not a sword…”

This is the distinction what present generation cartoonists need to make what if they are paid to run a political campaign. After all, aren’t they artists first?  As they say – art for art’s sake!