Caricaturing Culture in India is a highly original history of political cartoons in India. Drawing on the analysis of newspaper cartoons since the 1870s, archival research and interviews with prominent Indian cartoonists, this ambitious study combines historical narrative with ethnographic testimony to give a pioneering account of the role that cartoons have played over time in political communication, public discourse and the refraction of ideals central to the creation of the Indian postcolonial state. Maintaining that cartoons are more than illustrative representations of news, Ritu Gairola Khanduri uncovers the true potential of cartoons as a visual medium where memories jostle, history is imagined and lines of empathy are demarcated. Placing the argument within a wider context, this thought-provoking book highlights the history and power of print media in debates on free speech and democratic processes around the world, revealing why cartoons still matter today.

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Review

"In the wake of... Charlie Hebdo ... Ritu Gairola Khanduri's intimate history and ethnography of Indian cartooning has been given fresh global salience in addition to being an impressive piece of scholarship in its own right... designates "cartoon talk" (rather than cartoons themselves) as the central unit of analysis. This smart choice of method opens the way to a multisited ethnographic archive... offers interested specialists and advanced undergraduates an excellent opportunity to keep thinking, pondering, and puzzling over the big questions..." M. Rosen, Visual Anthropology Review

" ...Caricaturing Culture in India draws out the various ways in which cartoons have been used as sites for the negotiation of self and subjectivity within the context of liberalism. In doing so the book speaks to our current dilemmas and offers a much-needed counterpoint to debates about freedom of expression and democracy that, in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy and the Charlie Hebdo massacre, have made cartoons "a litmus test for modernity and its others"". Medha, The LSE Review of Books, London School of Economics and Political Science

"Through archival research and interviews with a community of contemporary cartoonists, the reader meets the well-known comics who made an indelible mark on how the past was seen and how that perspective carries through into today's cartooning as political knowledge to mass-mediated publics, in addition to serving as a medium that does the work of interrogating and complicating any straight notion of a single hegemonic Indian relationship between "evidential power, cultural entanglement, and history" (p. 15)... a great teaching tool." J. L. Jackson, American Anthropologist

"Ritu Gairola Khanduri's book Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (2014) is a pioneering study of the rich and complex history and artistic concerns of the newspaper cartoon in India..." Himal South Asian

"[Khanduri] has interviewed many of India's most prominent cartoonists, and has done exhaustive archival research on the earlier generation of cartoonists who are no longer around to be interviewed. Though Khanduri's book went to print before the Charlie Hebdo event, she does give an account of the way in which cartoonists in India -- particularly Muslim cartoonists -- understood the debates that followed the publication of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper." The Aerogram

"Ritu Gairola Khanduri breaks new ground in Indian studies with her captivating account of the political role cartoons and cartoonists have played in the country from the colonial period to now. Students of Indian political culture will find this book to be of enduring interest."
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago

"Ritu Khanduri's book is, on one register, about political cartooning and the history of politics in India; on another register, it provides us with a wonderful lens into debates on modernity, political society, and the state in colonial and postcolonial India. Khanduri makes a persuasive case that, far from being merely laughed at or dismissed as trivial, cartoons constitute a living archive of colonial and postcolonial history. This beautifully written book represents a stunning accomplishment and, I predict, will be discussed, debated, and admired by scholars in a variety of disciplines not just within but also beyond anthropology, media studies, and South Asian studies."
Purnima Mankekar, University of California, Los Angeles

"Written with elegance and verve, Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World is a deeply researched and exemplary study of newspaper cartoons as both a form and a source of political knowledge and everyday political commentary. Ritu Gairola Khanduri's delightful romp through nearly one hundred and fifty years of cartooning in India opens up an entirely new way of tackling some of the big questions in South Asian history and historiography: liberalism, democracy, and modernity. Her deft and rigorous analysis of cartoons together with their reception, the meaning people make of cartoons that generate laughter or cause hurt, sets the bar high for future studies of the media and democracy in India."
Mrinalini Sinha, Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History, University of Michigan

"Who laughs at what - and who doesn't - is a striking reflection of social and political relationships in society. This is why Ritu Gairola Khanduri's refreshingly original book, Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World, which traces India's political history through political caricatures across the ages, is timely and important."
Geetanjali Krishna, Business Standard

"... Khanduri invites us to think through the questions she raises in each chapter. Caricaturing Culture in India thus offers interested specialists and advanced undergraduates an excellent opportunity to keep thinking, pondering, and puzzling over the big questions of modern history through the specific lens of Indian cartooning."
Matthew Rosen, Visual Anthropology Review

"The lens of political cartooning culture offers Khanduri a new standpoint from which to examine the political historiography of India and its tryst with modernity. Meticulously tracing the production and reception of political cartoons across a nearly one-hundred-and-fifty-year period, Caricaturing Culture in India draws out the various ways in which cartoons have been used as sites for the negotiation of self and subjectivity within the context of liberalism. In doing so the book speaks to our current dilemmas and offers a much-needed counterpoint to debates about freedom of expression and democracy that, in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy and the Charlie Hebdo massacre, have made cartoons 'a litmus test for modernity and its others'. The book traverses several disciplinary boundaries and has much to offer to scholars of anthropology, history, politics, and media studies."
LSE Review of Books (blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks)

"Ritu Khanduri begins ... with a fundamental question that neither journalists nor politicians nor scholars have known how to adeptly speak to: when recent insensitive political cartoons are followed by international protests and debates, and humour becomes a litmus test to draw boundaries between religion and political freedom, ultimately "why do cartoons matter in this world?". Through the book, she tells us the history and the daily story of why they have mattered in Indian cartooning's 150-year history and why they continue to flourish as part of Indian culture ... The book is filled with critical, entertaining, and didactic cartoons by India's past and present cartoonists ... An exceptional analytical resource for graduate and faculty alike. Khanduri's citations are plentiful within current conversations in anthropology and history."
Jennifer L. Jackson, American Anthropologist

"... a pioneering study of the rich and complex history and artistic concerns of the newspaper cartoon in India ..."
Himal Southasian

"[Khanduri] has interviewed many of India's most prominent cartoonists, and has done exhaustive archival research on the earlier generation of cartoonists who are no longer around to be interviewed. Though Khanduri's book went to print before the Charlie Hebdo event, she does give an account of the way in which cartoonists in India - particularly Muslim cartoonists - understood the debates that followed the publication of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper."
The Aerogram

Book Description

A highly original history of political cartoons in modern India. Utilising newspaper cartoons published since the 1870s, archival research and interviews, Khanduri combines historical narrative with ethnographic testimony to give a pioneering account of the role of political cartoons in Indian culture from the colonial period to the present day.