Dangerous Laughter: Ironically, on World Cartoonists Day humour is beleaguered by intolerance and bigotry

Not long after Enoch Powell made his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech in which he foretold of a Britain caught up in civil strife because of immigration, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, Punch magazine carried a memorable cartoon which lampooned racism. It showed two obviously Asian gents walking down a London street lined with Irish pubs outside which drunken men engaged in brawls. The caption had one Asian saying to the other in a Cockney accent: “Bleedin’ furriners”.

Far more succinctly than a studious monograph the cartoon underlined the senselessness of xenophobia and racial stereotyping. It also showed that, in a free society, there is no issue so close to the knuckle that it cannot be lampooned with salutary effect. Contrary to Aristotle’s views, it is not tragedy so much as comedy which produces catharsis, the healthful purging of the negative emotions of fear and hatred. And of all the many forms that comedy might take, perhaps none drives home its point as pungently as does the cartoon.

However, in an ironic development, the cartoon finds itself endangered even as we observe World Cartoonists Day today. The first colour cartoon strip, The Yellow Kid, made its debut on this day in 1895. Celebrating its 121st birthday, the cartoon finds itself besieged by the malevolent forces of religious and ideological bigotry and intolerance. The murderous attack by extremists on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had featured a cartoon which purportedly hurt religious sensitivities, is only one of the increasing acts of violence targeting humour and satire. Closer home, cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was jailed on sedition charges a few years back. Since then sedition has become all too common a charge to fling at political dissenters, as happened most recently with JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar.

Intolerance is another word for totalitarianism, political or religious. Indeed, the darker the clouds that gather about us, the more in need than ever are we of the illuminating torch of laughter to help us find the path to sanity and a unifying sense of our common and imperilled humanity. The more dire the danger, the more we need the protective shield of humour, like the cartoon which shows a condemned man facing a firing squad who turns down the offer of a last cigarette because smoking could be injurious to his longevity.