CARTOONS OF THE Raj
Partha Mitter looks at how tensions and cultural interchange between
Indians and Britons are conveyed in the imagery of the colonial period.
with his
ping next to him. A Euro-
pean doctor conducts a perfunctory
post-mortem while the offender
ly smoking a cigar.
fs suggestion of
jon between European authori-
d the offenders, was one of the
seditious pieces that provoked the Raj
into imposing vernacular press cen-
sorship in 1878,
Although caricature and parody
have occasionally be intered
in Indian art since the ancient period,
caricature as a systematic weapon of
social criticism began with the popu-
alighat which colonial Cal-
cutta gave rise to in the nineteenth
century. Modern caricature as a form
of journalism was imported from
Britain by the British expatriates in
India. Their comic drawings were
inspired by Rowlandson. Howe
single humorous publication
+r impression in India than the
sh comic magazine, Punch. &
riotous procession of its offspring
greets us in magazines published in
India during the second half of the
last century: Delbi Sketch Book;
‘Bengali cartoonist and
master of his at, Gaganendranath Tagore
16Momus; The Indian Charivart; The
Oudb Punch; The Delbi Punch; The
Punjab Punch; The Indian Punch;
Urdu Punch; Gujarati Punch; Hindi
Punch; Parsi Punch and. Purneab
Punch from a remote town in Bengal
Unlike Gillray, Rowlandson and
Cruikshank, Punieb, which had given
the word ‘cartoon’ to the English lan-
‘guage, stood for Vietorian respectabil
ity, a respectability eagerly emulated
by’ the British-owned comic maga-
zines in India. Indeed, the comic
magazines, whether in Britain or in
India, were an index of imperial men-
tality
Although artists like Sir Charles
D’Oyly initially poked gentle fun at
the Anglo-Indian lifestyle in the early
nineteenth century, they soon turned
to the Indians as an object of mirth
Interestingly enough, so did the early
Indian cartoonists. The significant dift
ference was that while British car-
toonists in India viewed the Indian
subjects from the lofty heights of
moral certainty, Indian cartoonists
‘generally engaged in penetrats
parody and. social comment rather
than using the new-found weapon
against the Raj. In Bengali cartoons
the exposure of social mores atta
the ruthless candour of Gillray and
Rowlandson. British lack of self-erit
ccism may be explained by the fact
that the imperial bureaucracy had
cssified into benevolent despotism as
the British community, now confined
to clubs, cantonments and hill sta-
tions, became more and more racially
exclusive. The most brilliant repre-
sentations of expatriate life iP.
Atkinson’s Curry and Rice or The
Ingredients of Social Life at Our
‘Station” in India (1859)
What kept the Britons together was,
a tacitly shared ideology of the impe-
rial calling whieh permeated Victorian
selfimage and threw into bold relict
the essential ‘otherness’ of the
colonised. The clearest expression of
British attitude was the popular liter-
ature of the period glorifying the
Empire's civilising mission. If such a
mentality informed British attitudes
towards the ‘Oriental’, the Indian fur-
ther suffered from racial acrimony
that attended the uprising of 1857.
British public opinion at home and
abroad fed on the reported atrocities
during the rebellion. The stereotype
of Oriental behaviour was aired as
much by Punch at home as by the
British-owned comie magazine:
India.
‘Of the English comic magazines,
none was more accomplished than
The Indian Charivari founded in
1872. Even, wrote the editor
amongst the private community,
Native and European, how often cit-
‘cumstances occur which present them-
selves in a most ludicrous light. It is
‘our purpose ... of supplying once a
fortnight an illustrated paper, review:
ing current topies and matters of inter-
cest ina light, playful spirit.
In spite of this disclaimer, in the final
‘A Wholesome Diet’: an early
‘cartoon that appeared in
“Hindi Pusch ie 1889,
reassuring the Raj of the
peaceful intensions of
‘the Congress.
what provided the cutting
of The Indian Charivari was
racial malice. Caricature theives on
shared culture:
versus ‘them’. The joke is shared and
S0 is the hostility. The
ity of the comic ma
witty caricatures of the Bengali char.
acter, exploiting the existing views of
the Westernised Bengali as a buffoon
with touching pretensions to rival the
rulers in intellect and culture.
inst edu-
cated Hindus, especially the Bengali
Bhadralok (literally gentlemen class,
the term used for the Bengal élite),
was deep-seated. The welfare of the
Indian peasantry was in accord with
Raj paternalism, while the Bhadralok
constituted a competitive and disaf-
fected intelligentsia. Queen Vietoria’s
proclamation of 1858 promised equal
treatment to all subjects, which
prompted the Bengali élite to com-
pete for higher positions in the impe-
fial bureaucracy, the Indian Civil Ser
vice (ICS). ‘The Baboo Ballads’
sneered at such ambition on the part
Of the Bengali educated. Baboo Hurry
Bangsho Jabberjee, a comical Bengali
character in a novel published serially
in Punch demanded that not only the
ICS but also the Poet Laureateship be
thrown open to Indians. The Indian
Charivari was expecially incensed at
the nationalist vernacular papers such
as Hindoo Patriot and Amrita Bazar
Patrika which wociferously challenged
racial slurs against the Bengalis.
17One of the longest running
English-language comic magazines
published by an Indian to take up
political issues was Hindi Punch
(1878-1930). Its editor, Barjorji
Naorosji, who belonged to the Parsi
community in Bombay, supported
the moderates in the Indian National
Congress founded in 1885. This mag-
vourite personification of
anchoba, an Indian ver:
sion of the figure of Mr Punch, while
its drawing style often reflected the
English parent magazine, But it also
cleverly adapted prints by the univer-
sally popular academic painter, Raja
Ravi Varma, to make a political point
It depicts Lord Curzon, the béte noire
of the nationalists, as Sarasvati, the
Hindu goddess of learning (after a
na print), in a 1905 parody of his
high-handed treatment of academics
at the Simla education conference.
Curzon’s superior attitude had
licited another cartoon in Hindi
Punch, this time as Ganesha, the ele-
phant-headed god of good fortune
who needs to be propitiated for
worldly success
Lord Curzon, who was largely
responsible for the partition of Ben
gal in 1905, earned universal unpop-
18
(Left) Baboo Jabberjee: an 1895 Punch
iadealon,
‘parodied in The Baboo Ballads by the
English, who found the idea of the
‘educated Bengali hard to take, an
t) Lord Curzon ‘Propitiating Shi
‘an adept satirical response
of Hindi Punch,
nong the intelligentsi
whose spokesman was the Hindi
Punch. However, as the nationalist
movement gradually entered a phase
of widespread unrest and revolution
ary terrorism, the moderate Hindi
Punch fell out of step with maine
stream politics. Nor did it feel
inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's satya-
graba movement, cli
of the earlier politi
the 1930s,
In north Indi
ing as a
era as b
the pioneering ver-
nacular comic magazine was The
Oudb Punch, edived by Muhammad
Sajjad Husain of Lucknow from 1877
Many of its lithographic cartoons
copied from Punch, Fun and other
English magazines focused on politi:
ceal issues of the day. It effec
tiye use of a Punch cartoon on the
West Indian Rebellion of 1865, draw-
ing an analogy benween the rebellion
and nationalist unrest in India, The
cartoon, which alluded to student
unrest in an engineering college in
Bengal, portrayed the Director of
Public Instruction in Bengal as John
Bull, who had sent down student
leaders after a political demonste:
tion. In south India, the leadini
‘Tamil literary figure, Subraman|
published cartoons regularly
‘amil language weekly, India,
en 1906-10. As a supporter of
har
made scathing attacks on
berw
the extremist leader Balgi
Tilak, he
toons were those that made human
follies an object of amusement: few
were more striking than the ones
from Bengal, the earliest of which
appeared during the Bengal Renais-
sance in the late nineteenth century.
Satirical papers in Bengal existed
before the 1870s, but illustrated ones
appeared close on the heels of The
Indian Charivari (1873). Although
Bengali artists learned from it, they
were closer to Gillray and Rowland-
son than to Punch. If they happened
to choose the same victims as the
English magazine, namely the Bengali
Bhadralok, their purpose was very
different. Bengali artists embarked on
a savage and yet playful of self
mockery. Wit and innuendo, used in
caricature to expose pretension, are
symptoms of heightened individual.
n. Caricature, a prime device for
rodying contemporary manners,
this lively, self-absorbed milieu a
pon to turn on itself
1 cartoonists were heirs to an
earlier tradition of literary parodies of
the ik of Naba Babu Bilas, Naba Bibi
Bilas, and above all, Kali Prasanna
Sinha’s brilliant Hutam Penchar
Naksha. Significantly, criticism of
modern ideas did not emanate from
the traditional rural groups but from
within the urban élite itself. Whatsocial satire exposed was the ambigu-
us love-hate relationship that char-
a of the
Westernised intelligentsia ~ an exclu
sive and yet divided group, divided
¢ traditional signs of status
ct. Yet, when
the cartoonist pilloried his fellow
Bengalis he was in fact taking them
into his confidence, His victims were
ofien his greatest fans
The most renowned early comic
magazine was Basantak, also in-
spired by Punch. An obscenely fat
Brahmin ~ Punch transmogrified no
less ~ leers out of its front cover sur-
rounded by scenes of utter depravity
to which Calcutta had sunk. This
scurrilous, irreverent organ edited by
Prannath Datta (1840-88) lasted only
two years. Descended from a leading
Kayastha family, Datta preferred to
work independently than to join the
imperial bureaucracy. Basantak’s tar-
gets were colonial high officials and
their Bengali allies. There was
coarse immediacy to the drawings
furnished by his nephew that was ide-
ally suited to Datta « invective.
Hard-hitting satires included the
“erushing’ of Indian handlooms by
chester textiles, corrupt city
fathers and the mismanagement of
official famine relief, While Eng-
d obese candi-
smplete with dusky Oriental maidens,
‘education from an ISBT issue of Oudb Punch
dates, the rest of the population
starves.
However, as [have indicated, Bas-
antak reserved its most lethal barbs
for the Westernised élite in satires
reminiscent of Kalighat paintings.
Datta’s victims included the great
social reformer Iswarchandra
Vidyasagar’s ‘Society for the Preven-
tion of Obscenity’. The cartoon (€
1873) purports to celebrate the
change that had been wrought by the
Society. In Hindu religious icono-
raphy, the goddess Kali stands
naked with dishevelled hair on the
top of god, Shiva. Thanks to
Vidyasagar’s efforts, she now covers
her breasts in a blouse and wears a
modest full length skirt. The supine
victim sports a pair of tweed trou
with braces. The satirist disapproved
of both what he considered a sense of
undue modesty alien to Indian soci-
ety and the Victorian fashion in
clothes prevalent among the upper
classes.
Two modern innovation
technology and the proc:
mechanical reproduction, turned
Bengal into a society dominated by
the visual image. Pictorial journalism
became an indispensable part of liter
ary culture, The Bengali educated
enjoyed a rich harvest of illustrated
magazines, thanks to the brilliant
[itis treatment of Irish
Iges its debt to English Pune and t
(right) Rebellion Had Bad Luck’ ~ protest against government int
deliberate reworking ofa cartoon in the English parent magazine o
entrepreneur, Ramananda Chatterjee,
whose Prabasi became a model of
publishing early this century. The use
of high quality illustrations and
graphic art in Bengali monthly maga-
Zines such as Bharat Barsha, Manasi
0 Marinabani and Masik Basumati,
greatly expanded opportunities for
the aspiring cartoonist and many
responded to it with alacrity. The
most popular Bengali cartoons, how-
ever, were social and nor politic
The stock characters — hypocritical
vamindar, henpecked husband, pom-
pous academic, obsequious clerk,
illiterate Brahmin ¢ the cartoon:
ists’ favourites, Characteristic be-
haviour and typical cultural situa-
tions, such as the plump head clerk
returning from the bazaar with his
avourite fish or the thin school-
teacher with stick-like arms and legs
were well captured in drawing after
drawing.
rom 1917, one of the most popu=
lar cartoonists, Jatin Sen, featured
regularly in the leading monthlies,
Manasi 0 Marmabani and Bharat
Barsha. Sen's penetrating observa-
tion of Bengali physiognomic types,
blending individual idiosyncrasies
with national peculiarities, was un-
matched for the period. 4 student at
the Caleutta government art school,
Sen turned 10 cartoons, graphic art
an stereoty
METAL MART.
NICOL, FLEMING & CO.,
MULLER & cxand images for cinema hoardings
after failing to make headway in
nationalist Oriental art, A chance
mecting with a literary genius,
Rajsckhar Bose, gave Sen an opport
nity to produce prize-winning graphic
work for Bose's chemical firm. Soon
Sen joined Bose’s literary circle, while
his cartoons became the inspiration
for Bose’s own brilliant satirical
works, Gaddalika (1924), Kajjali
(1927) and Hanumaner Swapna
(1927). These remain some of the
No smoke without fire: Basantak’s response to steps towards female
(symbolised below by the literate, olesreversing woman)
reflects male anwieties about the emasculating
cemanelpat
most inventive parodies of Ben;
life, with their keen eye for the ridi
culous in social behaviour. To the
Bengalis, Sen's witty sketches be
came inextricably linked with Bose’s
text
Sen and other Bengali cartoonists
loved to dwell on the alfectations
of educated young men — their
exotic coiffure, outlandish sartorial
fashions, and partiality to gold-rimmed
ince-nez and other spectacles @ la
‘mode, ‘The cartoonists. ju
rasequences ofthis
Basantak,
the 1870s,
mismanagement of famine relict
two types of Bengali youth: the
rugged, saltofthe-earth masculine
young man and the languid, fin-de-
siéele, Oscar Wilde type. The second
ad poetry, spent his time on per
sonal grooming, and fainted at the
sight of anti-aesthetic unpleasantness,
The loss of manliness in the colonial
era weighed heavily on the Bengali
mind, just as it regarded the emanci-
pated woman with unmitigated hor-
ror. Nowhere were the cartoonists
more brilliant than in their portrayals
of dominating, domineering women.
The ambivalence of Bhadralok soci-
ety is first seen in the art of Kalighat,
with its images of viragos (wives oF
mistresses) trampling masochistic
babus. Women as a burden or a dis
ruptive force was a constant refrain of
cartoons ~ the old m: slave to
his young wife, the graduate ham:
pered by an illiterate spouse with
whom he could not make intellectual
conversation, and so on.
The movement for the improve-
ment of women’s conditions gath-
ered force in the nineteenth century
Suitee was abolished in 1829-30, bu
there remained other disabilities,
such as a low literacy rat
marriage, The first wom)
emancipated became the butt of the
cartoonist’s pen in Basantak, for
instance, which played on men’s sub-
liminal fears. Once women were edu-
cated, they would desert hearth and
20husband for the glamour of the out
side world. The nationalist, who sup-
ported women’s education, expected.
her not to demand equal rights
with men but to be an inspiring
mother.
A widespread anxiety pervaded in a
society where reforms had only
scratched the sui where child
marriage and the dowry were still
part of everyday life. The great poet
Rabindranath Tagore observed:
‘One group of people deny that there is
any need for women's education
because men suffer many disadvan
tages when women receive education
[An educated wife is no longer devoted
to her husband, she forgets her duties
and spends her ime reading and in
similar activites,
Basantak made chillingly clear the
consequence of marrying an edu-
cated woman: the wife relaxes in an
armchair with a novel while the poor
husband tries to light the coal oven in
the kitchen, AS smoke enters. the
room, the wife engrossed in the
book. says in irritation, “Can't you
close the kitchen door while lighting
the fire?’ (¢. 1873)
Jatin Sen and his contemporary
Benoy Ghosh, portrayed liberated
women in various guises, playing on.
men’s fears of emasculation. In
Women's Revolt’, a young lady is
dressed in men's clothes. In another
cartoon, the wife is going for a spin
with her gentlemen friend. Unlike the
unfashionable’ husband. she wears
fashionable dark glasses and hi
ntlemen friend sports 4 monocle
.d drives the latest model convert
ible. She instructs her husband to
give the baby a bottle while she is
‘out. Since he is not endowed by
nature to breastfeed, the husband
laments, he has no choice but to give
ita bottle
‘The most sensitive area was
employment: highly placed women
as judges, police superintendents
and office executives would all
threaten a man’s world, as drawings
‘of puny clerks working under
powerful women bosses suggest
The cigar-smoking lady repre-
sented the final collapse of man’s
domain.
The erosion of social values under
the impact of Westernisation re-
mained the favourite topic of Bengali
caricature, But no one matched the
unsentimental eye of Gaganen-
dranath Tagore, who raised cartoons
to the level of high art. A nephew
of Rabindranath, Gaganendranath’s
trenchant lithographs began appear-
ing from 1917 onwards in Birup
Bajra (Play of Opposites), Adbbut
Lok (Realm of the Absurd) and Naba
Hullod (Reform Screams). As the
writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri observes,
the only expression in art ever given
to Hindu liberalism [was] ... a set of
lithographs after drawings by Gage-
nendranath Tagore ... The cartoons
swould not suffer by comparison with
those of Daumier
Gaganendranath produced some
sharply observed political cartoons,
but by far his most original ones were
social satires. If he drew with the
‘economy of Kalighat, his ferocity also
bore an uncanny resemblance to
expressionist cartoons published in
Simplicissimus, the German paper
while taking graft and keeping
whores; Bengali officials masquerad-
ing as black sahibs; the long-suffering
wife of the babu who visits the demi-
monde.
Gaganendranath’s lithographs were
the culmination of the time-honoured
tradition of self-parody in Bengal
With these cartoons the artist was
‘engaging in a familiar game, the game
that highlighted the internal battle
between different sections of the
Bhadralok society on cultural identity
= modern or traditional, Eastern or
Western? Gaganendranath Tagore
stood last ine of such critics of
Bengali so
Young dandi
{in particular, made him one of is
founded in 1896. Both German and
Indian cartoons are recognisable by
their strong lines, grotesque figures
and faces and use of broad flat sur-
faces. From their styles it seems likely
that they ultimately drew inspir-
ion from the technique of
Japanese prints. It is known that
Gaganendranath admired Japanese
ar
he brunt of Gaganendranath’s
satire was borne by Westernised Ind-
ians, whom he mocked for trying to
be more English than the English. His
bloated figures have a savage inten:
ty, dwelling on what he saw as
hypocrisy, cant and double standards
‘of Bengali society: the Brahmin pay-
ing lip service to the sacred scriptures
a illustration to Rajsejhar Bose’s Gaddalikaa by Jatin Sen. Sen's partnership
ferary satirist Bose, and his acute observati
is most popular cartoonists earlier this century.
‘sof Bengal types, the fads of the young
FOR FURTHER READING.
Partha Mitte, Art and Nattonatiom to Colonial
India: Occidental ortentations. (Cambeiige
University Press, 1994); GubacThakurta, The
Masking of a New dian art: Artists, Aster
es and Nationalism tn Bengal, ¢1850-1920
(Cambridge University Press. 1922): 8
Venkatachalapathy. Lampooning the Ra}. Sub
famania Bharati and the Cartoon in Tam Jour
falism. 1906-1910" ICTR [indian Council for
Communication Training and Researeb} Jour
hua vol V, Nos. 1-2, M. Morn, The World Eney
Topedia of Cartoons (New York, 1980): N1
Greenberger, The British Image of India (Lo0:
ion, 1969), GN. Curzon, Lord Curzon tn
India (London, 1906}, C. Bolt. Victorian Att
des to Race (London, 1979): Sumit Sacker
Modern India (London, 1989), WG Archer
Kalighat Paintings (London. 1971)
Partha Mitter és Keader in Art History at tbe
University of Sussex and author of Art and
Nationalism sn Colonial India (Cambridge Un
erty Pres, 190,
21