"The important thing is not winning, but taking part." So goes the timeless satirical barb at the (fictitious) Arms Merchants Club, derisively equating the members' collective penchant for war games with the slogan of the Olympic Games. This cartoon, created by the maestro Abu Abraham back in 1982, is as potent today as it was then. Indeed, in looking over Abu's illustrated record of the second half of the 20th century, it becomes clear how little has changed – in Southasia and beyond.
Attupurathu Mathew Abraham ('Abu') was born in Tiruvalla, Kerala, on 11 June 1924. He began his career as a reporter at the Bombay Chronicle and the Bombay Sentinel, and later in Delhi worked as a staff cartoonist and caricaturist at the satirical English-language journal Shankar's Weekly. In July 1953, he moved to London, to receive immediate acclaim from widely respected publications in the UK (see accompanying article, 'Abu in London'). Abu Abraham returned to India in 1969 to work in Delhi as a political cartoonist at the Indian Express (1969-81), where he earned a reputation as one of the most hard-hitting cartoonists anywhere in the modern era. The accompanying selection of his work focuses on the turbulent, formative years from 1966 to 1988.
Attacking the war machine
An ardent and conscientious objector of militarisation, some of Abu's most biting cartoons are devoted to denouncing the industrial-war machine, as well as exposing the skulduggery called 'foreign policy' from the peak of the Cold War, during the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing upon his deep interest in English literature and the Romantic poets in particular, his cartoon depicting "World Opinion Beheading Military Rule" – a la John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" – is unequivocal about Abu's own position. A committed opponent of the nuclear-weapons programme, Abu was quick to comment on the idiocy of the neutron bomb, which he felt was developed specifically to eliminate all living things, even while it 'protected' property.