How Indian cartoonists are using the limitless potential of social media

At the beginning of the summer of 2016, Rohan Chakravarty, a cartoonist and illustrator, was in for a pleasant surprise. In his inbox was a message from a man from Peru, a stranger who had read one of Chakravarty’s cartoons on the pygmy marmoset’s unfortunate journey to becoming an exotic pet.
 
Sometimes greyish and sometimes tawny, pygmy marmosets are the world’s smallest monkeys. So small are they that they can sit atop a human finger — hence the nickname “finger monkeys”. The man considered owning a pygmy marmoset before he saw Chakravarty’s cartoon. 
 

Cartoons by Syam Sundar Unnamati

The dentist-turned-illustrator’s signature style balances coloured comics with dark humour or satire. As his Instagram handle, Green Humour, indicates, his posts promote conservation. In one cartoon, he shows a pangolin and a tiger together. The former asks his striped friend what they have in common. After the tiger makes a couple of incorrect guesses, the pangolin displays a bottle and says, “Chinese medicine”. The comic is a comment on traditional Chinese medicine’s use of both tiger and pangolin parts, which has powered illegal wildlife trade that encourages poaching of protected animals.
 
Just as social media was beginning to lose its lure with feeds quivering under the weight of paid influencers and selfies basking in the glory of Instagram-fuelled vanity, memes and sarcasm-laden pages made our day. And now, slowly, the celebration of freedom of expression and the promise of reaching thousands of like-minded people is seeing the emergence of pages dedicated to special causes. Chakravarty’s Green Humour is one of them.
 

Cartoon by Rohan Chakravarty

Vijayawada’s Syam Sundar Unnamati started using his Facebook page as a platform for his Ambedkarite cartoons after the NCERT Ambedkar controversy of 2012. The contentious cartoon showed Jawaharlal Nehru holding a whip while Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar rides a snail that is meant to represent the Indian Constitution. Though Unnamati’s cartoons find their way to Dalit magazines, social media has widened the circle for conversation. “Just putting out Ambedkarite thought through cartoons has made people more aware of caste-based issues,” says Unnamati, currently a research student pursuing visual aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
Among the many platforms available today, Instagram’s format is especially suited to promoting causes through the arts. Even as it integrates cartoon panels, it has also emerged as the chosen platform for stream of consciousness-styled captions. Configured for pictures, Instagram has long surpassed everything one thought it was capable of.
 

Cartoon by Rohan Chakravarty

A page called “bhuli.art” for instance aims to remind people of the storehouse of superfoods that is Uttarakhand. From recipes with barnyard millet for jhangora ki kheer to kandali ki saag (stinging nettles, or bicchu grass as it is called locally), the idea is to document and revive pahadi culture through local delicacies, drapes and traditions such as elders sowing nine to 10 seeds before the start of Harela, a Kumaoni festival.
 
“Many international organisations and institutes were able to contact us thanks to social media. Instagram helped us reach out to a wider audience and connect with fellow artists, nutritionists, social activists and individuals who are working hard to make a difference,” say Tanya Kotnala and Tanya Singh, the duo behind bhuli.art. The two also work with the women and child development ministry on issues such as promoting breastfeeding and nutrition.
 

Cartoon by Surya Shekhar Biswas

The number of issues and concerns addressed on the platform is particularly refreshing as one navigates through the troll-laden annals of the internet. For instance, Texas-based Huda Fahmy’s webcomic titled “Yes, I’m Hot in This!” follows not just Fahmy’s life as a hijab-clad American Muslim, but it also humorously details misconceptions from both sides of the hijab. India, too, has its fair share of creative souls using their social media feeds for good.
 
On Mumbai’s Sarah Modak’s Instagram page you’ll find illustrations of all things science — from women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to a series dedicated to Stephen Hawking. One of these posts illustrates the time Hawking reportedly threw a party but sent out no invites. It was his attempt to prove his 1992 postulation that time travel into the past was impossible. No time traveller arrived to partake in the hors d’oeuvres and iced champagne that awaited them.
 
Similarly, Bengaluru’s Mounica Tata uses her handle, “Doodleodrama”, to talk about everything from feminism to micro-aggression. And Mumbaikar Sailesh Gopalan’s “Brown Paperbag Comics” is about everyday life, but with a hint of sarcasm. On Mumbai-based illustrator Priya Dali’s page, you’ll find her fictional comic, “I wanted to be the Man of the House”, which she made as a response to the universal, post-coming out question: “When did you first realise that you were not straight?’”
 

Cartoon by Surya Shekhar Biswas

In more ways than one, says Kolkata-based Surya Shekhar Biswas, social media — and Instagram in particular — has become a “safe place to express yourself”. Biswas’ page, “surya.vis.worxx”, promotes queer art, as do Anirban Ghosh’s “anirban_ghosh” and Priyanka Paul’s “artwhoring”.
According to German online statistic portal Statista, India has more Instagram users than Brazil, Russia, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom and is second only to the United States (120 million users). As of January 2019, Instagram had 75 million active users in India.
 
Bengaluru-based Rachita Taneja, who has about 75,000 followers, says comics on everything, from body positivity to feminism, reach a million people across the globe every month. Starting her page, “Sanitary Panels”, was a way of expressing dissent after she heard of students getting arrested for things they had posted online in 2014. When she was recently asked by a reader why she chose to name the page Sanitary Panels, the net neutrality advocate said it was to make “Indian uncles squirm”. The idea behind the name, says Taneja, is to let her readers know that the issues she addresses through her stick figures are often classified as taboo.
 

Rohan Chakravarty of Green Humour balances coloured comics with dark humour or satire

While the art-led approach to social issues has taken off rather organically, the movement hasn’t been equally nurturing towards India’s languages. The dearth of posts in local languages is startling. The artists feel that the space for using regional languages is still waiting to be claimed.
 
“There are a lot of local cartoonists doing work in regional languages, but those are mostly all hardcore political cartoons,” says Shailesh Kumar, a professor of computer science at Ujire, Karnataka. “I’ve done many pieces on issues like water conservation and deforestation, but I just didn’t get as many ‘likes’ as the political cartoons bring in,” says the 45-year-old whose cartoons are accompanied by Kannada text.
 

‘Instagram helped us reach out to a wider audience ‘

Tanya Kotnala and Tanya Singh |  bhuli.art

Making a point in one’s native language hits really close home, says Unnamati, the Ambedkarite cartoonist. Alternatively, using English also means potentially reaching a larger audience, many artists feel.
 
“I am aware that using Tamil possibly narrows down my audience, but that’s (also) the beauty of it,” says Lakshman Balaji, a Chennai native who has recently moved to New York for higher education. Many of Balaji’s posts, on the page named “Lakshman’s Cartoons” on Facebook and Instagram are in Tamil, are transliterated into English. He throws in some Hindi puns for good measure, too.
 
If the recent history of the thunderous rise of short-video apps like TikTok, ShareChat, LIKE and VMate have taught us anything, it is that being multilingual is key to flourishing in the Indian market. This is something on which Instagram’s artist-warriors have yet to capitalise. But who can refuse a double tap, the Instagram-way of liking a post, when it reminds you of things closer home, as our languages do.
 
Change is slow, but it is coming. A few posts by Biswas feature Urdu and Bengali script. Taneja has just begun to transliterate her comics into Hindi. Undoubtedly, when this aspect of the movement also takes flight, it’ll be double tap all the way.