Acknowledgments; Introduction: the empire of cartoons; Part I. Colonial Times: 1. Upstart Punches: why is impertinence always in the vernacular?; 2. Gandhi and the satyagraha of cartoons: cultivating a taste; 3. 'Dear Shankar … your ridicule should never bite'; Part II. National Times: 4. Becoming a cartoonist: Mr Kutty and Bireshwarji; 5. Virtual gurus and the Indian psyche: R. K. Laxman; 6. Uncommon women and common men: pocket cartoons and 'situated knowledges'; 7. Artoons and our toons: the prose of an Indian art; Part III. Global Times: 8. Crafty petitions and street humor; 9. 'All our gods and goddesses are cartoons'; Conclusions: timeless myths and timely knowledge; Notes to the text; Bibliography; Index.
A highly original study of newspaper cartoons throughout India's history and culture, and their significance for the world today.
Ritu Gairola Khanduri is a cultural anthropologist and historian of India. She is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Texas, Arlington. In addition to her research on media, she is currently completing a book on Gandhi and material culture. Research for Caricaturing Culture in India has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the Institute for Historical Research-Mellon Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation's prestigious Carley Hunt Postdoctoral fellowship.
'Ritu Gairola Khanduri breaks new ground in Indian studies with her
captivating account of the political role cartoons and cartoonists
have played in the country from the colonial period to now.
Students of Indian political culture will find this book to be of
enduring interest.' Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton
Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago
'Ritu Khanduri's book is, on one register, about political
cartooning and the history of politics in India; on another
register, it provides us with a wonderful lens into debates on
modernity, political society, and the state in colonial and
postcolonial India. Khanduri makes a persuasive case that, far from
being merely laughed at or dismissed as trivial, cartoons
constitute a living archive of colonial and postcolonial history.
This beautifully written book represents a stunning accomplishment
and, I predict, will be discussed, debated, and admired by scholars
in a variety of disciplines not just within but also beyond
anthropology, media studies, and South Asian studies.' Purnima
Mankekar, University of California, Los Angeles
'Written with elegance and verve, Caricaturing Culture in India:
Cartoons and History in the Modern World is a deeply researched and
exemplary study of newspaper cartoons as both a form and a source
of political knowledge and everyday political commentary. Ritu
Gairola Khanduri's delightful romp through nearly one hundred and
fifty years of cartooning in India opens up an entirely new way of
tackling some of the big questions in South Asian history and
historiography: liberalism, democracy, and modernity. Her deft and
rigorous analysis of cartoons together with their reception, the
meaning people make of cartoons that generate laughter or cause
hurt, sets the bar high for future studies of the media and
democracy in India.' Mrinalini Sinha, Alice Freeman Palmer
Professor of History, University of Michigan
'Who laughs at what - and who doesn't - is a striking reflection of
social and political relationships in society. This is why Ritu
Gairola Khanduri's refreshingly original book, Caricaturing Culture
in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World, which traces
India's political history through political caricatures across the
ages, is timely and important.' Geetanjali Krishna, Business
Standard
'… Khanduri invites us to think through the questions she raises in
each chapter. Caricaturing Culture in India thus offers interested
specialists and advanced undergraduates an excellent opportunity to
keep thinking, pondering, and puzzling over the big questions of
modern history through the specific lens of Indian cartooning.'
Matthew Rosen, Visual Anthropology Review
'The lens of political cartooning culture offers Khanduri a new
standpoint from which to examine the political historiography of
India and its tryst with modernity. Meticulously tracing the
production and reception of political cartoons across a nearly
one-hundred-and-fifty-year period, Caricaturing Culture in India
draws out the various ways in which cartoons have been used as
sites for the negotiation of self and subjectivity within the
context of liberalism. In doing so the book speaks to our current
dilemmas and offers a much-needed counterpoint to debates about
freedom of expression and democracy that, in the wake of the Danish
cartoon controversy and the Charlie Hebdo massacre, have made
cartoons 'a litmus test for modernity and its others'. The book
traverses several disciplinary boundaries and has much to offer to
scholars of anthropology, history, politics, and media studies.'
LSE Review of Books (blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks)
'Ritu Khanduri begins … with a fundamental question that neither
journalists nor politicians nor scholars have known how to adeptly
speak to: when recent insensitive political cartoons are followed
by international protests and debates, and humour becomes a litmus
test to draw boundaries between religion and political freedom,
ultimately 'why do cartoons matter in this world?'. Through the
book, she tells us the history and the daily story of why they have
mattered in Indian cartooning's 150-year history and why they
continue to flourish as part of Indian culture … The book is filled
with critical, entertaining, and didactic cartoons by India's past
and present cartoonists … An exceptional analytical resource for
graduate and faculty alike. Khanduri's citations are plentiful
within current conversations in anthropology and history.' Jennifer
L. Jackson, American Anthropologist
'… a pioneering study of the rich and complex history and artistic
concerns of the newspaper cartoon in India …' Himal Southasian
'[Khanduri] has interviewed many of India's most prominent
cartoonists, and has done exhaustive archival research on the
earlier generation of cartoonists who are no longer around to be
interviewed. Though Khanduri's book went to print before the
Charlie Hebdo event, she does give an account of the way in which
cartoonists in India - particularly Muslim cartoonists - understood
the debates that followed the publication of a caricature of the
Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.' The Aerogram
'As Khanduri's cartoonists and their consumers speak across the
book, readers get the opportunity to remain alert to the parallel,
concentric, and intersecting histories of the political in
twentieth-century India, be it colonial knowledge production,
Gandhian politics, Nehruvian modernity, or majoritarian, communal,
or caste politics. As cartoons and politics co-produce each other,
in our current times too, their fluid interfaces become palpable in
Khanduri's book, in ever so active ways.' Sanjukta Sunderason, The
Journal of Asian Studies
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