Paris massacre raises many crucial questions
By Harihar Swarup
So far Asian countries, particularly India and Pakistan, have faced the brunt of terror but the menace has now spread to Europe. The continent has faced, perhaps, for the first time, the terrorist attack of this magnitude when the press was attacked. In the worst form in France in recent decades, masked gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” stormed the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly for lampooning religion including radical Islam, killing 12 people-two policemen and ten journalists including the editor-before escaping in a car. Speaking fluent French, the gunmen are believed to be from al Qaeda. They were shot dead by the French police on Friday.
It appears that terrorists had done their home work very well and mastered the logistics. They called their victims one by one by name and then killed them in cold blood. The operation lasted barely five minutes. They called it revenge for the newspaper’s satirical treatment of Islam and its Prophet.
Charlie Hebdo is well-known for courting controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders and has published numerous cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad. The paper also mocked Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic state. Another cartoon released in last week’s issue, titled “Still no Attacks in France”, had a caricature of a Jihadi fighter saying, “just wait-we have until the end of January to present our New Year wishes.”
Terrorist attack on the French Magazine was a barbaric atrocity, a cold-blooded murder that no amount of grievance, religious or otherwise, can justify. This is not just an assault on an irreverent magazine but a challenge to the idea of free expression itself-a freedom that lies at the heart of democracy. The murderers who killed journalists and cartoonists in Paris were aiming to kill more than just the people they were shooting at. They aimed to silence dissent itself and the individual’s right to question, which is central to all modern democracies, including ours.
Attack on Charlie Hebdo is in line with the Iranian fatwa against Salam Rushdie for his book Satanic Verses and recent cyber-warfare by the North Korea after an unflattering film about their leader Kin Jong Un. No modern society can allow such violence in its midst and it must be pushed back.
Since 2006, when it first published the Danish cartoon of Prophet Mohammed, Charlie Hebdo had been under threat of violent attacks by Islamist groups. Refusing to be intimidated, the publication continued to caricature Islam even after the firebombing in November, 2011, just as it also relentlessly lampooned Christianity and Judaism-its Christmas cover caricaturing the birth of Jesus was designed to provoke and cause offence.
Self-censorship in order not to hurt religious sensibilities is now the norm in most part of the world, so too in India, where media and expressions of popular culture including cinema, art and writing have to walk a tight rope in deference to what Salman Rushdie had described as a non-existent “right to not to be offended;” The brawl caused by Hindutva groups against the film PK is the most recent example.
In truly democratic societies, this should not be the case, and that is what Charlie Hebdo believed and practiced. Irrespective of what anyone thinks of its editorial policy, all who believe in freedom of expression and democratic way of life must express solidarity with the magazine, and condemn this unspeakable act of violence against them.
Eminent cartoonist E. Unny says: “The cartoonist bent over his drawing board can be gunned down. But who can stop a million fingers tweeting and texting?”
The evolution of cartooning in India has been linked to stalwarts like Shankar and Laxman; they had been part of the art exposing the oddities of well-known people that evoked laughter all around for almost four decades. Cartooning is a form of caricaturing in which a person is presented in a comic form by distortion or exaggeration of his most obvious features making the figure frothy, frisky with touch of humour. The late Keshav Shankar Pillai was the first Indian cartoonist who began lampooning the rulers of British India during the Independence movement.
Later, he turned his prickly lance of humour to Indian leaders. The objective of his magazine – Shankar’s Weekly – was to create mirth and merriment by taking potshots at one and all, particularly the political leaders of his time. He must have cartooned Jawaharlal Nehru more than 1,500 times. Like Shankar, Walt Disney too began his career as cartoonist and created the popular character “Mickey Mouse”.
The difference between cartoons of those days and now is that earlier the caricatures did not hurt religious sensibilities of the people or lampooned gods and goddess. Cartoonists the world-over should desist from maliciously hurting the religious sensibilities of the people to whichever religion they belong. (IPA Service)