Drawing the lines: Studying the Common Man caricatures by R.K. Laxman to understand dominant political discourse around legitimate political contestations in postcolonial India

ABSTRACT

The paper studies the Common Man political caricatures by R.K. Laxman, a staff cartoonist at the Times of India, to understand dominant political discourses in postcolonial India. It argues that constructs like the ‘common man’ and ‘vote bank’ through popular cultural discourse like caricatures have a critical impact on the political landscape of the country. While the former is associated with an urban English-educated middle class, the latter is used to denote the socially marginalised sections of the electorate voting en masse as a form of political assertion. The latter is perceived as an aberration in the modern secular democracy and its political voice is often delegitimised. Further, the former is associated with economic liberalisation, development and anti-corruption. The paper demonstrates how Laxman’s Common Man is a proponent and mascot of these in the popular imagination. Thereby indicating that the popular cultural archive has indeed had a visible impact on the political, economic and sociological cartography of the nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Political caricature
• South asia
• popular culture
• postcolonial studies
• R.K. Laxman
• common man

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Larry Bush describes the phenomenon of formation of political culture from political cartoons in detail in the context of American Politics. He draws from a number of cultural theorists and linguists like Saussure to study how political rhetoric is born using political caricaturing. In this paper I extend the study of that process to trace the impact of these constructs on the political history of India. In other words, I draw from cultural theories on political nature of cultural artefacts and try to understand how these cultural artefacts then influence political behaviour and in turn political history of post-Independence Indie. This is a unique look at Indian politics away from political structure like the State or social structures like Caste and focusing instead on cultural constructs like ‘common man’ and ‘vote-bank’ as born and bred in popular and print Larry Bush describes the phenomenon of formation of political culture from political cartoons in detail in the context of American Politics. He draws from a number of cultural theorists and linguists like Saussure to study how political rhetoric is born using political caricaturing. In this paper I extend the study of that process to trace the impact of these constructs on the political history of India. In other words, I draw from cultural theories on political nature of cultural artefacts and try to understand how these cultural artefacts then influence political behaviour and in turn political history of post-Independence Indie. This is a unique look at Indian politics away from political structure like the State or social structures like Caste and focusing instead on cultural constructs like ‘common man’ and ‘vote-bank’ as born and bred in popular and print.

2. Western scholars like Selig Harrison commenting in the late 1950s on the Indian democracy prophesies a collapse of the nation when Nehru steps down. (Harrison,1960).

3. The nationalist sentiment further develops in caricature in the opening decades of the 20th century as papers like Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Free Press Journal, Amrit Bazar Patrika and its Bengali sister concern Yugantor, begin occupying a central position in the political struggle against the imperialist state. Shankar, Abu, and Laxman, leading caricaturists of post-colonial India, worked in the Hindustan Times, the Bombay Chronicle and the Free Press Journal respectively at this time. Founded and run by prominent Congress politicians and supporters like Gandhi and Pherozshah Mehta, the editors were vocal opponents of the Crown and so were their staff cartoonists. Yet with independence, the press found it very difficult to criticise the Congress government owing to their long association in the anti-colonial struggle. This is said to have famously inspired Nehru to remark, ‘Don’t spare me Shankar’ epitomising the democratic right that the caricaturist enjoyed in those idealistic opening decades of political independence. The flourishing presence of caricaturists, in its own turn, became the symbol of a thriving modern democracy that allowed and even welcomed legitimate criticism.

4. Anything from National Research Laboratories to cheaper government produced sweetmeats for the festival of Deepawali have been reported as to have benefitted the common man for example in the piece National Research Laboratories: ‘RESULTS WILL AID COMMON MAN’ by Staff Correspondent.

5. This was described in the ‘Speech on The Linguistic State’ in the House of People, New Delhi, 7 July 1952, by Nehru.

6. THE ARMED FORCES (SPECIAL POWERS) ACT, 1958 gave the armed forced powers to carry on atrocities in areas designated as ‘disturbed’.

7. Take for example, A letter by Mr. Aziz Maini on 20th December 1985 talks of how the unwillingness of the Rajiv Gandhi government to interfere in Muslim personal law is a vestige of British policy since 1857 and promptly relates the question to deeper colonial continuities in politics. Aziz Maini, ‘Letter: PM’s Assuarance’, The Times of India, 20 December 1985.

8. An insult to the common man’ Vajpayee, A B. The Times of India (1861-current); Apr 7, 1985; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Times of India pg. A1

9. R. K. Laxman, Brushing up the Years: A Cartoonist’s History of India, 1947–2004 (New Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2005).

10. Laxman, 2005.

11. Laxman, Brushing up the Years.

12. Shukla Harishchandra. Rajiv Gandhi Cartoons. Cartoons. www.kaakdrishti.com. Archives.

13. Thakray Balasaheb. Force of Habit. Cartoon. The Free Press Journal. Mumbai. Issue: 17th September 1954.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Srimati Ghosal

Srimati Ghosal, is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. Before this, she has been an assistant professor in English and Modern South Asian History at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal University between 2020 and 2023. Originally from Kolkata, Srimati finished her Master’s in English at Presidency University in India in 2018. Following this, she joined Cambridge University in 2019 for an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies focusing her thesis on political caricaturing in post-Independence India. The same year she also did a project with Sahapedia-UNESCO on political caricature in colonial Bengal. Srimati is interested in the study of cultural theory, literary studies and the cultural history of South Asia. Her interests are widely interdisciplinary moving between History, Cultural Studies, and Literary Studies. Postcolonial perspectives and the Subaltern school of thought are of particular theoretical interest to her