A controversial cartoon in The Australian newspaper on Monday has critics and the public in an uproar over its offensive and outdated stereotypes of Indians, who are depicted eating solar panels.
Veteran cartoonist Bill Leak was critiquing India's role in the Paris climate change summit, where India is one of the four nations with the highest greenhouse gas emissions. His depiction of Indians as a starving and backward people who'd chop up and eat the solar panels sent to them to curb their emissions is racist — plain and simple.
Leak uses stereotypical imagery of Indian men in turbans and long, overgrown beards, saying stupid things, which is reminiscent of colonial cartoons that treated Indians as the "other," a threat to immigration and jobs. This cartoon is particularly foolhardy since Indians are the second-largest migrant group in Australia. It's easy to see that Leak's cartoon isn't so different from a racist cartoon from Canada in 1914, around the time of the Komagata Maru.
Leak's cartoon comes a week after the New York Times published a cartoon depicting India as an obstructive elephant that's halting the Paris climate change summit train. It's disappointing to see that the Times is part of the problem when it's held up as a beacon of journalism.
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But perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that even the Times has run an offensive cartoon. Last year, the publication ran a cartoon about India's Mars Orbiter Mission that depicted India as knocking on the door of the "Elite Space Club" with a cow in tow.
While the Western media has attacked India's criticism of richer countries, commenters took issue with the Australian cartoon that was trending on Twitter on Monday.
Leak's own statement about the cartoon was that "India and other developing nations are too stupid to handle renewable energy and should stick to coal."
It's surprising that a cartoon like this was able to run in a national newspaper, reinforcing harmful and colonialist imagery that has no place in 2015. We're able to criticize certain aspects of India's position at the Paris summit — especially its use of coal alongside its focus on renewable energy. Yet there's no need to criticize a government's policy by going the racist route and depicting an entire nation through a stereotypical insult.
What are your thoughts on the cartoon?
Main Image Photo Credit: Scroll.in
Rumnique Nannar
Author
Rumnique Nannar is a new journalist with a passion for all things pop culture, film, and art. Rumnique was born in London, with a predilection for devouring English chocolate with her Vogue, ANOKHI, and Glamour magazines in tow. She is currently in her Journalism Masters at UBC. Connect ...
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