When A Muslim Is A Political Cartoonist

During my childhood, I used to draw the whole day without getting tired and the first viewer of those drawings was my father. And I used to ask him, “Tell me what is this?” He then used to guess. Soon, this game of drawing and guessing stopped. I acquired good skills, and started drawing mountains, rivers, sky, birds, houses, landscapes, flowers, and everything th✱at was beautiful. As I grew, my pen started adapting to new changes. The beautiful thin💫gs got overrated because the what was happening around me was bothering me a lot, so my purpose of drawing changed. I became a cartoonist, a political cartoonist.

For a political cartoonist, line drawing is the easiest tool, but the strongest tool is the IDEA. A cartoonist may draw the idea as a satire, but its objective is not only to make people smile or laugh, but also it should make people think. It should raise a question: whether what is happening is right or wrong. This is the process of a political cartoonist―from the cartoonist’s desk to viewer’s eyes and mind. Political cartoons are one of the strongest mediums of expression and that’s why they are being always targeted by the state. Today, the problem for cartoonists is this: they are always in🍌 danger of being targeted when they belong to a particular community and the community is being targeted.

I started political cartooning when I was studying at the Aligarh Muslim University. At that time, in almost every semester, the university was the hot media topic―the university was being 🔯targeted by the state. In that moment I was just a participant in all those students’ protest to counter the attacks on the Aligarh Muslim University. But now I had a medium to express my dissent: political cartoons. My friends in the university inspired me to create my own language of protest. During the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and 🅰the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) protests, I started drawing―on walls, paper and digital―and then started uploading those works on the social media and that’s how I started growing as an independent political cartoonist.

It had never been easy, to express myself the way I wanted to. I am a Muslim and also a political cartoonist. Before I express, there is fear, a fear sponsored and created by the state. Now the question is why is the state more bothered by a Muslim political cartoon? Since a Muslim political cartoonist is more aware about the community’s oppression, their expression will always create a ꦿstrong and different language than others. The state will always target a Muslim political cartoonist first, because it’s easy for the state to associate them with crime. Crimi🐷nalising a Muslim satire artist is the state’s new tool.

All these things stop us from expressing our thoughts. Before publishing or uploading a political cartoon on social media, we think twice. Sometimes we don’t upload it also because of the fear 💝of persecution. Persecution can stop our art. But art our must reach the masses.

The extra consciousness before making a political cartoon directly affects our mental health. We feel he🥀lpless about the state of affairs―state oppression, the Babri demolition, the mob lynching incidents, hate speeches of political leaders―and this becomes the reason of our everyday anxiety. We get suppressed under this anxiety. We feel squeezed; we feel confined in the open air.

Persecution for a political cartoonist is not a new thing. It has happened in every regime; it happened in the Congress period, and it is happening now too. In 2012, Aseem Trivedi was arrested over a sedition charge because of criticising the government. The Emergency period of the 1970s was particularly challenging for cartoonists. The works of cartoonists like Abu Abraham and R K Laxman got b🐲locked. Then the question is what is the difference between that time and now?

As a Muslim political cartoonist, I have realised now that i🙈ntolerance is not only e𒐪xists in government, but also among a large part of the population.

Cartoon is always a strong medium because cartoons are immortal. Many years ago, R K Laxman made cartoons and those are still relevant. One single cartoon can say thousands of words. I always💫 try to make a cartoon that not only makes you laugh but also makes you think. Sometimes they will make you question yourself too―in the time of darkness what is your stand, and which side will you be taking? My images show brutality and pain also because the daily news is disturbing.

There are a number of struggles to sustain as a political cartoonist, but I can’t leave political cartooning in any way. Because this profession, this art, gave me an identity, a dignity. I hail from a remote Muslim villag📖e of West Bengal. The Bengali Muslim community still does not have proper representation in the education and job sectors. To be an artist in Bengal, we first have to fight against the Bhadralok’s hierarchy, then we learn art.

Authoritarian regimes will always be against mass political cartoons. Till the time human beings seek change in the interest of society, political cartoons will always be there. Till the time human beings do not st🍷op ‘thinking’, political cartoons will always be there.

(Views expressed are personal)