R K Laxman, his iconic 'Common Man' and contemporary cartoons

Long before India's iconic cartoonist R K Laxman passed away earlier this year, his bespectacled 'Common Man' donning a checked coat and dhoti with an umbrella in his hand, had disappeared from the front page and since then cartoons seem to have lost their hitherto editorial role in publications.
Leading cartoonist E P Unny and senior journalist Krishna Prasad analysed the current state of cartooning in the country and debated the relevance of Laxman's 'Common Man' in present political milieu on the inaugural day of the four-day long 'Samanvay Indian Languages festival' that began yesterday.
They participated in a panel discussion "Common People, Uncommon Minds" which emphasized that readership was the driving force behind media and had helped define the position of the cartoon in newspapers over the decades, indicating a paradigm shift.

"Laxman himself has said that if you are good, you will stay on without any artificial support but that cannot happen through generations through decades. That can only come through readership. That is the key to understanding Laxman in my view. Relating to our concerns now, to me Laxman is hugely significant," Unny said.
"Now we are beginning to see signs of politics that seem to be very aggressive. So what happens to the readership when something like this happens? The first casualty in the media is the cartoon because the cartoon is a one-sided thing. Unless you make a one sided thought through the cartoon, it won't work," he said.

For Prasad, the onus of the shrinking space for cartoons in Indian media space lies both on editors and proprietors of publications as well as the readers.

"Editors and promoters and proprietors across are massively scared of cartoons and therefore you see a disappearance of cartoons from the front page. Besides the kind of journalism changing where we do not have space for these kind of broader cartoons there is also a similar reaction from readers.
"Laxman started his career in the Times of India in 1947 but the concerns that the common man had from Matunga were concerns that concerned every single citizen of Bombay, whether you drove a car or came in a bus. What you see in the newspaper consuming class now is a substantial paradigm shift from that kind of concerns," Prasad said.

"Where are all so wobbled up in our own little selves that
we are all car driven, we have no common shared talking point, so I suspect that in this age, Laxman would be finding it difficult to find the kind of space that he did in Times of India back then. I think it would be hard for him to find readers who would align themselves to this kind of middle-of- the-world-hurt-nobody kind of cartoons. Laxman's common man spoke largely of potholes, electric wires slums. Frankly, do these concerns concern newspaper readers these days?
"Laxman would also be quite short strapped at this point of time in this kind of a scenario. He was largely concerned with issues of civic governments and municipalities and was not, in my view, as cutting edge as some of them are these days. They are absolutely brilliantly brazing in a way that Laxman was not. He was surely a middle class common man kind of cartoonist and I think he would feel out of place in this modern day 2015 newspaper space," Prasad said.

For Unny however, Mumbai- based Laxman chose to view politics from a distance but his works were political enough to provoke his readers to question those in power. He was able to keep the dialogue going without being aggressive.
"Laxman had a clear vision of what he was doing, on what kind of readership he had and how politics impacted them - the Bombay readers were looking the politics from a distance. He may not have made the reader angry enough to vote or feel disgusted with what's going on, but he kept them consistently distressed with authority.
"Laxman did nothing which was not exactly organic. Look at his humour. His humour his mostly situational. He did not stylise too much. But he had the full repertoire a great, first class cartoonist. He could caricature really well, and of he wanted to make a sharp point, he will make that point. Post emergency, some of his cartoons on Indira Gandhi and the Shah Commission were as good... Post (Babri) demolition, he and Rajinder Puri came up with the same cartoon, same caption. How can you say he was any less political?" Unny said.

While the cartooning space is certainly under the threat of being completely wiped out, Laxman's style of cartooning appears to have laid the stones for practicing the art in mediums beyond newspapers.
"Laxman operated from India's first big city...And great comic carts are made in cities. Cities become very central to the concept of graphic novels. So we are going to have many new young cartoonists, may be not newspaper cartoonists but comic artistes who will keep the spirit of cartooning going. If newspapers cannot give them space, publishing houses might and websites might give them that space," Unny said.

The panel moderated by Hartosh Singh Bal, also had Christel Devadawson, who has authored a book that explores the career of 'graphic satire' in independent India, offering detailed analyses of prominent cartoonists including Shankar Pillai, Abu Abraham, O V Vijayan and R K Laxman.