In April 2023 a cartoon by Patrick Chappatte for Der Speigel, drawn as India’s population exceeded China’s, was decried as racist.
Including a purportedly outmoded stereotype about India (an over-crowded locomotive speeding past a bullet train) and appearing in a German outlet, the argument was made that the cartoon betrayed a fading colonialist power’s anxiety over competitors in the Global South. And, once it was noted that the cartoonist was born in Pakistan, this was seized upon as proof of a prejudiced outlook.
The media furore was intense, lasting two weeks. Most disturbingly, the German ambassador called the cartoon “neither funny nor appropriate”52 and equated Germany and India’s “freedom of press”.
This recent incident illustrates a trend over the period; accusations of hateful content triggered by cartoons, amplified and exaggerated by social media activity.
Cartoonists inside India receive a huge amount of pushback whenever any criticism – explicit or inferred – is made of President Modi and his government. The cases covered elsewhere in this report and in Chappatte’s own essay53 on the matter make it very clear such reactions are driven by partisan, sectarian, and nationalist sentiment.
It should therefore come as no surprise when the same ideological response is activated by a cartoon from an outsider, with the added opportunity to cast accusations of xenophobia, racism, colonialism, and any other rhetorical flourishes intended to shut down discussion.
Regardless, cartoonists working in the international press must be at liberty to make observations about others without being lambasted as racists. Their work is hampered, and reputations placed at risk after interventions from politicians.
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| (Population: India overtakes China) (by Chappatte - Switzerland) |
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