'Cartoonists should be liberals and radicals': 1997 Interview with Abu Abraham
Attupurathu Mathew Abraham (1924 - 2002), pen name Abu, was an Indian cartoonist, journalist, and author. He was a life-long atheist and rationalist. Over 40 years, Abu Abraham worked for newspapers including The Bombay Chronicle, Shankar's Weekly, Blitz, The Guardian & The Indian Express.
What is the essential quality of a cartoonist? A fearless mind? : (Laughs) Fearlessness, yes. In the sense that you express only what you believe in. Cowardly behaviour is when you try to please your editor or the proprietor or anybody else and draw cartoons on subjects that you yourself don't believe in. That happens sometimes when cartoonists go from one paper to another. If you are honest to yourself, you feel a sense of freedom and what you call, fearlessness. Cartoonists are privileged people as there are very few of them functioning at a time. A newspaper can't afford to lose a staff cartoonist. But if you start fearing, you don't take any risks.
You said cartoonists are privileged people. In what way? How different are they from journalists? Traditionally, the cartoonist has got away with a lot of liberties. It was people like Domier and David Low who established this tradition of freedom. Without freedom, a cartoonist won't be able to really function. You will only produce second-rate work. Cartoonists have to think with a certain amount of passion, have to respond and react to world and local events whether it is poverty or corruption or dowry or sati. But if a cartoonist goes and accepts dowry, then he can't draw cartoons on that. In other words, cartoonists should be liberals and radicals. All good cartoonists are like that. You will seldom find a rightwing cartoonist. The middle group, yes. For example Laxman, he is so liberal centre. He is not leftwing. People like Vijayan are leftwing. Shankar was leftwing. It is difficult to place them right and left. Generally, you have to have some radical thinking. But if you are for the status quo,what is the point in drawing?
You once said your best cartoons were drawn during the Vietnam and Bangladesh wars. Was it because you were so disturbed by the cruelty of it all? Yes. Both were actually monstrous wars. The Americans were going to 'take Vietnam back to the stone ages' -- that was the expression they used. In Bangladesh, it was pure massacre. I went to Tripura and saw what was happening there. I wrote an article in The Guardian saying it was actually cowardice not to intervene in the situation which had created 10 million refugees. In Delhi, there was a controversy. It was Indira Gandhi's leadership and those who were against her were against the Bangladesh war. Then, people were being taken for a ride by the Western embassies. I know journalists who used to come to the Delhi Press Club and say it was all false propaganda, that there weren't any 10 million refugees. I said, I was there, that there was no doubt about it. It is a kind of scotch-stuff policy that the Pakistanis were pursuing. There was a racist element in it. The Pakistani Punjabis believed they were the true Muslims and not the black Bengalis. It is the other way round. They are one of the oldest community of Muslims in the world. Conversion started in eastern India soon after Islam was established... http://www.rediff.com/news/oct/31abu.htm
See also: Wrestling with the Wind – A Graphic Route To Fascism by Sadanand Menon
The other symbolic morphology we need to trace is with the emblem/logo/graffiti of the lotus, yet another Vaishnavite substance. It is interesting to see how the visual of the lotus, with its central full petal and flanking half petals on either side, has been morphed into a trishul with a central spear and two flanking petal-like spikes. This makes possible the short journey of legitimizing a kamala diksha into a trishul dikha. Once again, the satvika bhava inherent to this natural symbol -- signifying auspiciousness, fertility, fecundity – is led, cavalierly, to signify it’s diametrically opposite meaning of weaponisation and war. This also facilitates its aggressive and self-inscriptive visceral manifestations as the tattoo, tonsure and body-paint. Incidentally, it is also interesting how the trishul, which is a Shaivite device, is conscripted to perform Vaishnavite duties. It is akin to the similar invasive surgery performed on the Ganesha icon, a Shaivite dhaatu, which has been commandeered to the cause of pan-Hindutva. Ganesha is being increasingly depicted now through gigantic commissioned murtis, during Vinayaka Chaturthi, as a Hanuman clone who tears open his chest to reveal Rama/Sita/Lakshmana, or as the long-toothed bore of Varahavatar rescuing the universe or in a midget form as Vamanavatar. It is worth remembering that in the late ‘60s, when BJP’s former avatar, the Jan Sangh first contested elections with the ‘lamp’ as their election symbol, O.V.Vijayan had rushed up with a brilliant cartoon in The Hindu. It showed a ballot box with the ‘lamp’ emblem; the caption below read ‘Mein Lampf’. In a simple and urgent way he had alerted us, even then, to the clear and present danger. It is this kind of graphic alertness we need to develop today to expose all fascist meta-language...
In his acceptance speech for the 2001 Ezhuthachan Award, Vijayan spoke of how the craftsmen of language were losing the ability to recognise the quality of their material. He spoke of the horror of a language that had sprung holes and recalled the language of his childhood, in which the winds blew into his native Palakkad from the east, touching the Palmyra trees. Today, he said, there is neither Eastern wind, nor Palmyra trees, and in these absences, language moves to deafness. He ended with the anguished cry "Enikkende bhashaye thirichu tharika." Give me back my language. The anguish was characteristic of Vijayan
