NEW DELHI, Oct 29:
President Pranab Mukherjee today said that it is the job of a cartoonist to convey important social messages by using humour as a tool.
“Laughter is a stress buster for the public as well as the politician. The cartoon reminds the public that the ruler is as fallible and human as they are,” the President said at a function organised to pay homage to cartoonist late P K S Kutty at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Noting that “cartoonists hold up the mirror to public life in the country and help us as a nation to see ourselves,” the President called for cultivating a temper which welcomes criticism.
“We, as a country, must return to the Nehruvian times; cultivate a temper which welcomes criticism, where comment is free but facts are held sacred.
To be able to lampoon without hurting, caricature without distorting, to say with a few strokes of the brush what lengthy editorials fail to express-this is the art of the cartoonist,” the President said.
Mr Mukherjee said till about the late 1980s, a leader was recognised more by his/her caricature than the photograph.
“The older leaders collected and displayed their caricatures in their workplace. They could live with their own funny pictures, and because they found in the popular cartoon a ready connect to the public.
I myself had cartoons of me drawn by Laxman on my walls till recently. Indira ji has written in her foreword to a collection of Shankar’s cartoons on Nehru. Cartoons have become an integral part of the intellectual life of a modern society. Some draw without intent to draw blood; some remove masks and hold a mirror to the face of the society. There cannot be a cartoon without a certain amount of irreverence,” Mr Mukherjee said.
Paying tribute to the contribution made by Kutty to the modern cultural and political history of our country, Mr Mukherjee said, “As a person from Kerala, who lived in Delhi and drew cartoons for Bengali newspapers (even though he spoke no Bengali), Shri Kutty was a quintessential Indian. His life and works were not limited by linguistic or State boundaries.
A cartoonist like Kutty put across his comment sharply but with refreshing humour and he as well as his guru, Shankar, passed on this culture to succeeding generations of cartoonists. I call upon the cartoonist fraternity of India to keep his memory alive by excelling in their chosen craft.”(UNI)
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