Book: No Laughing Matter: The Ambedkar Cartoons, 1932-1956, Edited by Unamati Syama Sundar, Navayana Publisher, Paperback, Published: 20 May 2019, 408 pages, ISBN: 9788189059880, Rs. 599
Scholars and Dalit Activists have both recognized that discourse, theory and knowledge production have collectively done a disservice to the body of Ambedkar’s thought and writings. Lauding Ambedkar only as a champion for Dalit rights has been like shining a spotlight on one of the many facets to his thinking. Sadly, I can be accused of having done the same to No Laughing Matter. It was suggested to me as a ‘MUST READ’ by a fellow batchmate during my Masters in JNU, which became lost, but registered in my endless to-read lists. The same friend has grown to be my strongest moral compass in life, realizing that I still hadn’t read the copy, he parted with his own copy with notes scrawled in the margins and shared his intimate musings of the book with me. Even though I had the copy, it took me two more years to actually read the book, and the message that encapsulates the thoughtfulness that humour must encapsulate for all of us:
“We need to be careful what we laugh at and what we feel okay with being a subject of laughter and general amusement.”- Md Ashraf Khan, 2020
No Laughing Matter does exactly what was pointed to me through the thoughtful message, it takes a benign subject matter from Indian history but a deeply political and rigorously studied subject matter globally, that of cartoons in newspapers. This benign subject in corners of modern Indian history is revealed, and so begins a political reading of humour in modern Indian history. Suraj Yengde’s introduction to the cartoons pointedly contextualises the book for the readers, collated and published at the peak of the Ambedkar cartoon debacle in NCERT textbooks. In 2012, a particular cartoon depicting Ambedkar on a snail titled the ‘Constitution’, while Nehru was seen holding a whip behind, was heavily debated and finally removed from the textbooks. Yengde, in the light of this controversy, guides the reader to build intrigue of how Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution, was represented through history?
Unnamati Syama Sundar traces Ambedkar’s cartoons in National Daily’s from 1932 to 1956, which are divided within seven time periods and are composed of the most telling and important cartoons from those periods. What was especially intriguing to me as a reader was the influence that archives hold over time. The book brings us to face a present from a past, it forces the reader to imagine those cartoons not just as historical depictions of Ambedkar but through the thorough contextualization of the cartoons, makes the reader face history. The reader no longer knows what the cartoon symbolises through the text, but through contextualisation the cartoon will now produce their own interpretation of history. The reader is no longer reading history as a given.
The uniting thread through the seven time periods is more than caste-ist discrimination that Ambedkar faced through his life, it is more than the undying love for the Congress during the National movement. It shows an almost unique form of erasure being attempted by cartoons where every effort of Ambedkar was shown in the light of foolhardiness, arrogance or complete stupidity. This erasure is not a mere absence, but through mockery misrecognising every act results in creating a history through that reading. The erasure one could say has today been overturned in the conversation of ‘Pappu’ towards Rahul Gandhi, and the mockery of Manmohan Singh’s silence. This form of humour is a concerted effort, do all participants recognise their role in a particular knowledge producing machinery? My conjecture is no.
The archival work of locating these cartoons, recognizing their artists and working on contextualizing has been done with great accuracy and diligence by Unnamati Syama Sundar. Themself a cartoonist, they have used their expertise to trace the authorship of cartoons which remained undersigned. A brief description of each cartoon titled as ‘Scratching the Surface’ does not give a history of the cartoonist, or the skill of the cartoonist but how Unnamati reads ‘the political’ in that particular cartoon. Each description does not necessarily solve the puzzle of each cartoon, it leaves the reader with the scope to build their own understanding and a political reading of the cartoon itself.
The beauty of reading No Laughing Matter lies in its non verbose and easy to comprehend text. It does not challenge the reader through jargon, discourse or theory. It challenges the reader to be political, it is not a book written in an expert voice or scholarly analysis guiding your thought, but a book that contextualises an image, provides you the image and then seeks from you the act of drawing the links as an active reader. The strongest suit also became for me a misplaced expectation. Going on to read the book I had imagined being introduced to the theory of political reading and political humour beyond Greek political thought. The book only falls short on this front as a misplaced expectation by the reader and hence a word of caution to the next person who chooses the book. It is a rare feat of Unnamati Syama Sundar that they edited a book which actively involves the reader.
Sakshi Sharda is the editor at The Daak. She ideates, coordinates and ensures that the thematic deadline is met. A workaholic who needs to be more often than not forced to shut her screens. She is currently a Doctoral candidate at SOAS and researches on Gender, Law and State.
She can be reached at s.sakshisharda@gmail.com
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