The Cartoons Panel: A Joke

THE SIX-MEMBER PANEL, headed by the former chairman of the University Grants Commission, SK Thorat, which was constituted to review cartoons in the social sciences textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), submitted its report on 27 June. Much to the dismay of academia, the panel recommended the deletion of several cartoons, considering them either “ambiguous” or showing politicians and bureaucrats in a negative or “inappropriate” light.

To give the panel the benefit of the doubt, a comprehensive review of six social science books within the mandated timeframe of a month was an arduous task, made all the more complex by the very subjects of the books. Unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences do not comprise a well-delineated field: their methodology of research and inquiry is open-ended and flexible, and the results interpretable variably, often subjectively, and almost always with a dash of libertarianism. Any review of social sciences books that is dedicated to setting or resetting parameters is itself an exercise in social inquiry, and, therefore, necessarily susceptible to indeterminacy.

As any seasoned social scientist would argue, a credible study is one that weighs all the relevant parameters in order to develop a robust framework for research, makes the right assumptions (not presumptions), and then thoroughly evaluates the source material to derive results and conclusions. The most critical element here is probably developing the right tools for social research, a system of measurement and analysis, which allows the social scientist to mould an intrinsically nebulous inquiry into the form of a declarative evaluation.

True to the spirit of such a task, the panel, going by its report, set out to first develop the tools necessary: a set of criteria that it would employ. The panel began by referring to guidelines already laid down by the NCERT for preparing books on the social sciences. These guidelines range from very broad principles—the foundation of meaningful and wholesome education—to the very specific objectives of the study of the social sciences.

But the panel found no specific NCERT guidelines for the use of cartoons. So it referred to the prefacing ‘A letter to you’ in these books by the NCERT’s panel of chief advisors, which emphasised the importance of cartoons as aids to learning and to deepen the students’ understanding of the “working of democracy”. The panel also referred to studies by different groups of social scientists that advocated “precaution” with regard to the selection of schoolbook cartoons. The panel cites them in a rather limited manner to make the conclusion that “….there is also the risk of offending through misunderstanding with any joke being perceived as source of ridicule, sarcasm or as being racist or sexist in nature”.

It was after weighing the approaches against each other—one extolling the merits of cartoons, the other advocating some restraint—that the panel arrived at what ought to have been the most crucial aspect of this inquiry, the aforementioned reviewal criteria. And this is where its methodology failed, miserably.

The panel drew up a list of six criteria, four of which touched upon the merits of cartoons as visual aids to learning. The other two criteria were “sensitivity with respect to various caste, ethnic, religious, gender and regional minorities”; and “messages the cartoons give about the people and political institutions”.

What went missing were the most important criteria for evaluation: the depth, quality and sincerity of satire. Cartoons, by definition, upend political and social hierarchies, subvert official narrative, and ridicule, even blaspheme, conventional norms of thinking. Take that away from them and what one is left with can only be described as banal line drawings.

In their ‘Letter...’, the NCERT’s chief advisors made a fleeting reference to the importance of cartoons in deepening the students’ understanding of the “working of a democracy”. What, exactly, do they think democracy is if not a process of contentious politics and snarky argumentation? And what better way to understand this process than by learning to appreciate cartoons, parodies, jokes—indeed, social and political satire of any and every kind?

The skewed tools of evaluation that the panel developed took into account only the superficial aspects of a cartoon: that of an aid to ‘visual relief and fun’, or an illustration that ‘provides background information in the text to help students appreciate the message’. Even worse, the cartoons in question were to be evaluated using prescriptions that are antithetical to the very essence of cartoons: to not tinker with social and cultural sensitivities, and to give the ‘right messages about people and political institutions’.

Only the bluntest cartoons could do these criteria justice. But then they couldn’t be called ‘cartoons’.

It is no surprise that since the very tools of the inquiry were bent out of the true, the results have ended up distorted and ill-advised.

Fortunately for our students (and for our democracy), the National Monitoring Committee of the NCERT, which had commissioned the report, rejected almost all the suggestions of the Thorat panel, ordering the removal of only a couple of the 21 cartoons that the report had recommended be deleted.

Anant Nath