पाठ्य पुस्तकों में कार्टून क्या गलत हैं?

कार्टून विवाद हालांकि एक या दो रोज की खबर बनकर रह गया। इसकी बारीकियों पर जाने की कोशिश ज्यादा लोगों ने नहीं की। मुझे इधर-उधर जो भी पढ़ने को मिल रहा है उसके आधार पर कुछ बिन्दु उभरते हैं जो इस प्रकार हैं:-

• दलित राजनीति से जुड़े एक मामूली से संगठन ने इस सवाल को उठाया। महाराष्ट्र के इस संगठन को इसके बहाने  अपने आप को आगे लाने का मौका नज़र आया। सुहास पालसीकर के घर पर तोड़फोड़ के पीछे भी इस संगठन की मंशा अपने को बढ़ाने की है। 
• संसद में यह सवाल उठने के पहले मानव संसाधन मंत्री के साथ कुछ सांसदों ने चर्चा की थी। कार्टून को हटाने का फैसला भी हो गया। 
• यह भी समझ में आता है कि सांसदों का एक ग्रुप बड़े दबाव समूह के रूप में उभर कर आया है। सरकार और विपक्ष से जुड़े बहुसंख्यक सांसद राजनीति लेकर जनता के बढ़ते रोष से परेशान हैं। अन्ना हजारे आंदोलन के दौरान यह रोष मुखर होकर सामने आया। 
• सरकार केवल आम्बेडकर वाले कार्टून को ही नहीं हटा रही है बल्कि किसी भी प्रकार के कार्टून को पाठ्य पुस्तकों से हटाना चाहती है। 
• सवाल यह है कि क्या किशोर मन को राजनीति की बारीकियाँ समझ में नहीं आएंगी। या उसे यह सब नही बताया जाना चाहिए। उसके मन में क्या राजनीति के प्रति अनादर का भाव है? 

इस मसले पर इधर उधर से सामग्री मैने एकत्र की है उसे पढ़ें

बीबीसी की हिन्दी वैबसाइट पर प्रकाशित योगेन्द्र यादव के लेख का एक अंश पूरा लेख पढ़ने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें

अंबेडकर स्वयं भी मानते थे कि 'हीरो-वर्शिप' लोकतंत्र के लिए बड़ी खतरनाक बात है.

बिना एक शब्द पढ़े किसी चीज के बारे में राय व्यक्त की ये सब सांसदों की और संसद की गरिमा के अनुरूप नहीं है और मुझे यकीन है कि इस भेड़चाल से मुक्त होकर हमारे देश की संसद कुछ बेहतर सोच सकेगी.

और अगर नहीं सोचती तो एक नागरिक के नाते मेरा फर्ज है कि मैं संसद को चेताऊं, संसद को बताऊं लेकिन उस संस्था का निरादर करना भूल होगी.

कहीं न कहीं ये प्रतीकों की राजनीति है और ये खौफ है कि यदि मैं एक सही चीज के पक्ष में खड़ा दिखाई न दिया तो न जाने मुझे क्या हो जाएगा. ये खौफ कल हमने काफी संजीदा सांसदों में भी देखा जो अन्यथा बड़े संजीदा लोग हैं सही तरीके से सोचते हैं. उसकी वजह मैं समझता हूं वो एक बुनियादी कमजोरी में है, जो केवल मानसिक कमजोरी नहीं है. जो लोग जमीन से दलित समाज के लिए राजनीति कर रहे हैं, जो दलित समाज के दुख-दर्द और उनके संघर्ष में शामिल हैं उन्हें इन संकेतों की राजनीति से खौफ नहीं होगा.

रही बात इन पाठ्य पुस्तकों की. इनमें सिर्फ अंबेडकर पर कार्टून नहीं हैं, इसमें नेहरू पर कई कार्टून हैं, इसमें इंदिरा गांधी पर अनेक कार्टून हैं. गांधी जी के बारे में कार्टून हैं और जाहिर है कार्टून किसी का महिमामंडन नहीं करते, ये विधा है जो चोट करती है और जो लोग इस विधा का क, ख, ग नहीं समझते हैं, उन्हें कुछ समझने की जरूरत है और हां, हमें इस किस्म की प्रवृत्ति का बाकायदा निषेध करना चाहिए. लेकिन ये लड़ाई है जो सिर्फ एक कानून से, सिर्फ एक सरकार से, सिर्फ संसद के दो सदनों से न लड़ी जाएगी न हारी जाएगी न जीती जाएगी.

ये न सिर्फ हमारे समाज की असहिष्णुता का परिचय है बल्कि हमारी राजनीतिक निरक्षरता का भी परिचय है. कल तक जो आरएसएस, बीजेपी वाले करते थे, वही आज अंबेडकर के नाम पर हो रहा है, परसों किसी और नाम से हो जाएगा. लेकिन असहिष्णुता के साथ ही ये निरक्षरता का भी लक्षण है कि अब हम पढ़ना भी नहीं चाहते कि हम किस चीज का विरोध कर रहे हैं.

हर समाज अपने 'सेंस ऑफ ह्यूमर' को अलग-अलग विधा में अलग-अलग स्थान पर अलग-अलग तरीके से व्यक्त करता है. अपने ही समाज के बारे में हिंदुस्तानी जिस तरह से चुटकुले सुनाते हैं, मैं समझता हूं दुनिया में उसका कम मुकाबला होगा, परम्परागत समाज में राम के बारे में क्या नहीं बोला गया, क्या नहीं लिखा गया.

Yogendra Yadav in the Indian Express: Dangers of Deletion:

The danger is that this is just the beginning. The minister’s reply in Parliament mentioned a review of other “objectionable” cartoons and content in the textbooks. A group of parliamentarians has been demanding the deletion of several cartoons that showed politicians in poor light. Many MPs are uncomfortable with the truthful account of post-Independence history in these books. Ambedkar’s name may have been used to shield much else. This may be the beginning of a slow and imperceptible rollback of a historical transition in the writing of textbooks in this country that took place between 2005 and 2008, following the adoption of the National Curriculum Framework...

...In the course of a TV debate, a fairly well-read MP complained that this cartoon sowed a doubt in the mind of a young student. The danger is that we might begin to think that textbooks must not create doubts, must not leave any questions.

...The attack on Palshikar’s office has momentarily shifted attention to the physical danger to which scholars involved in such an exercise may be exposed.... Just think of the message such an incident sends to any future textbook writer. You cannot blame them for looking at every passage, every image, every drawing to ensure they have eliminated the possibility of giving rise to any offence to any group that may exist then or in future. The worst form of censorship is the one that lies in the mind of the author. In any case, a text pruned of the possibility of misreading is a text devoid of any interest and substance.

हिन्दू में प्रकाशित जानकी नायर के लेख का अंश पूरा लेख पढने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें

Since all the furore has been about the appropriateness of the cartoon in a school text book, we need to understand the urgency of not infantilising our teenagers: in this large and complex society such as ours, can we possibly achieve some consensus on the kinds of themes, sections of society and aspects of our past which we can “safely include” in a prescribed text book? Does the student not need to be prepared to enter into a complex world with multiple received and achieved hierarchies? The prospect of a sanitised, pious space that teaches us what the old colonial “civics” textbooks taught us is the undesirable alternative.

Will even such sanitisation ensure that our children are saved from encounters with controversial materials and images? Schooling in the recent past has flooded back into the house, with projects and assignments crowding the schedule and the holidays, forcing parents to monitor, prepare and coach the child on a continuous basis.

For many families, the burden of assignments has turned them to the internet, which surrounds us like a gas, to produce the most banal patchwork jobs. Will the electronic media replace the textbook as the source of Continuous and Comprehensive “Education”? And can the proliferation of “authors” and images on the internet be as amenable to the controls that are being proposed for the textbook?

Kapil Sibal's views 
समाचार एजेंसी की रपट 

Under attack over the cartoon row, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today (May 14.2012) acknowledged that cartoons on the political class should not find a place in textbooks as they influence the impressionable minds of students.

Holding that the issue is not about the content of the cartoons but about their inclusion in textbooks, he said the impression should not go to the world that the political class is corrupt and bereft of any principles.

"We believe textbooks are not the place where these issues should be influencing impressionable minds. That's our position," the Minister told reporters outside Parliament.

Sibal, who has come under sharp attack from the opposition as well as from within his party over the cartoon of B R Ambedkar in an NCERT political science textbook, said a cartoon acceptable in newspapers may not be fit for a textbook as the recent controversy has highlighted.

"The same cartoon in a newspaper may well be acceptable but the same cartoon or a series of such cartoons attacking the political class or a community in a textbook which has a tendency to influence impressionable minds may well not be acceptable", he said.

Sibal said he disagreed with the views of NCERT advisors Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar that the cartoon on Ambedkar should not be interpreted in a manner in which the MPs had interpreted it and therefore decided to remove them.

Yadav and Palshikar, who as advisors of the textbook had approved the cartoon, had stepped down after the row.

The Minister said the removal of the content will not affect the students in anyway as they will get the books on time.

"Students will get their books. All these will be done within one month. Printing will be done once again after remove the cartoon and than distributed," he said.

The comic republic

Editorial in Hindu May 14, 2012

“Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul”, B.R. Ambedkar said in a famous speech to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949, just before putting the Constitution of India to vote. “But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship”. If only the parliamentarians who vented their anger against a 1949 cartoon last week had bothered to read and understand the hero in whose unnecessary defence they sprang up, Indian democracy would have been spared the degrading spectacle of the government banishing a sixty-year-old sketch from the classroom. The sight of our parliamentarians cutting across the political spectrum foaming at the mouth in simulated rage, vying to outdo each other in their pious indignation, and sporting their ‘hurt' sentiments like badges of honour was like watching a bad soap opera gone worse. That they could have spent the day grandstanding over a totally inoffensive cartoon is not merely deplorable. It is also downright dangerous, if we pause to consider that these are the men and women we elect to safeguard our constitutional democracy, of which the freedom of expression is a fundamental and inviolable part. Disrupting Parliament would have been unjustifiable even if the cartoon were repugnant. But to create a controversy over a comment on the slow speed with which the Constitution was being drafted, on the absurd ground that the cartoon “insulted” Ambedkar, was downright ridiculous.

The demand that criminal action be taken against those who permitted the cartoon's publication is reflective of a larger malaise among many of India's politicians. Apparently, they think there is more political mileage in creating controversies over irrelevancies than addressing genuine issues facing Dalits such as backwardness and discrimination. Predictably, the Centre's response was one of total capitulation, reflected in HRD Minister Kapil Sibal's craven apology, his agreement that the cartoon was “shameful,” and his promise of even criminal action in the matter. That there is a slippery slope between hostile speech and violent behaviour was manifest when the office of one of the scholars involved in the production of the textbook was ransacked by vandals. The argument that the cartoon could be misconstrued by the 11th standard schoolchildren who read the textbook is bogus and an insult to their intelligence. It is our MPs who showed a total lack of acumen and wisdom by wasting the nation's time on a complete non-issue. Worse, they have ensured that public life in India, already awash with hurt sentiments of one kind or another, will now be inundated by a torrent of demands to ban more and more expressions of culture, art and knowledge.

Zero Tolerance

Editorial in Indian Express May 15.2012

Where are the tall leaders who could put an end to this experiment in censorship?

The UPA government may have only been true to character when it keeled over at the first hint of political uproar against cartoons in NCERT textbooks. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal hurried to withdraw the book with the newly controversial Ambedkar cartoon, without a minimal attempt at debate, and Pranab Mukherjee said that books with cartoons of leaders will be withdrawn and “appropriate action taken against those who indulge in such acts”. But what’s most disturbing is the unanimity with which all political leaders in Parliament agreed — no, competed — to show zero tolerance. The Ambedkar cartoon was just a first flimsy excuse, the entire tradition of political caricature may be under threat. Other anodyne cartoons in the NCERT political science curriculum featuring Jawaharlal Nehru, A.B. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh are said to have incurred the “strong displeasure” of a section of MPs. Lampooning leaders will now bring heavy consequences. Given that many MPs — from Arun Jaitley to Ram Vilas Paswan — have strong memories of the Emergency, and of defying it, it is indeed sad that they now seem so comfortable simply whiting out material from a textbook. We rely on the good sense of our legislators to uphold free expression, and this inability to see an old cartoon for what it is makes them more laughable than anything dreamt up by a satirist.

What explains this eruption of intolerance now? After all, India has travelled a long way in terms of textbook politics. After years of BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi spreading the saffron agenda, and Congress’s Arjun Singh retaliating with the same tools, sanity had finally set in with the National Curriculum Framework, and its determination to create textbooks with a wider debate. Instead of being authored by a single, all-knowing authority, the aim was to involve several scholars in the preparation of the texts and to encourage students to think critically for themselves. Introducing the Constitution through classic political cartoons is exactly in line with this approach.

Who could have predicted that today’s MPs, stung by the so-called lack of respect for the political class, would choose this absurd way to demand it? Our experiments with censorship have gone too far. It is now up to our tallest political leaders to put an end to this competitive intolerance, and speak up for an increasingly disused freedom.