The UPA government has been on the warpath against cartoons in NCERT textbooks. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal lost no time in withdrawing the book with a controversial Ambedkar cartoon. Pranab Mukherjee, Union Finance Minister, has asserted that books with cartoons of leaders will all be withdrawn. What is more, appropriate action will be taken against those who do it. Members of Parliament were united in showing rabid intolerance on this issue. The Ambedkar cartoon was just an excuse. There may be a concerted attack on the subtle art of political caricature. Cartoons of Jawaharlal Nehru, A B Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh have incurred the displeasure of some MPs. All this recalls the repressive measures of the emergency in 1975-77. Those politicians who were very much opposed to such measures now seem to have turned around.
India has travelled a long way in terms of textbook politics. Murli Manohar Joshi started a campaign and there was some sabre-rattling during the tenure of Arjun Singh on this issue. Then it seemed that sanity had returned to the National Curriculum Framework. The NCERT decided to prescribe textbooks which could trigger healthy debates. The power in this respect was not to be vested with an all-knowing single authority. Scholars were invited to involve themselves in preparing the textbooks though one or two like the book by Dr Romilla Thapar on ancient Indian history raised eyebrows. Students were encouraged under this framework to think critically. Introducing the Constitution with classic political cartoons was considered a good idea. It was not at all expected that MPs later on would be up in arms against it. The time has no doubt come to stop experimenting with censorship. Leaders should themselves be advocates of freedom of expression as long as it does not degenerate into defamation. They should remember that even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi lost the electoral battle in 1977 because of her enforcement of press and other forms of censorship.
