| Caricatures of Congress participants by Abin Shrestha, Ajit Ninan, Gihan de Chickera, Humaun Kabir Manik, Ismail Lahari, Keshav, Rabin Sayami, 'Feica', Prabhakar Wairkar, Rajesh KC, 'Sarab', Sudhir Tailang and 'Tanmoy'. |
Turning a spotlight on a ubiquitous but often ignored genre of journalism: dispatches from the first Southasia Cartoon Congress, 14-15 November, Kathmandu.
In the minds of many, cartoon is a word synonymous with funny. This is not an unreasonable linkage; readers' first responses to an effective cartoon is often, hopefully, laughter. At the same time, however, there needs to be some distinction drawn here with specifically editorial, or political, cartooning. After all, to simply label the editorial cartoon as amusing is to do it a great injustice. Certainly, humour is an integral part of the editorial cartoonist's craft, thriving as it does on mocking the absurdities of political leaders, laws and social norms. But scratch the surface, and it becomes difficult to distinguish who exactly is the victim of the joke. At first glance, the politician is the injured party, parodied by the cartoonist's brutal pen. In fact, though, it is the common citizen who suffers the consequences of, for instance, communal violence, economic meltdown and government corruption. It is the leaders who allow these events to occur, either purposefully or otherwise, and it is for this that they are lampooned. Editorial cartoonists entertain by giving tragedy a comic spin; but all the while, readers are really laughing at their own pain.