Washington: New York Times carried a cartoon during the just concluded visit of United States by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He had embarked on the US visit immediately after overseeing the successful entry of the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission into the Red Planet’s orbit.
The whole nation looked overjoyed with the feat achieved by India that became the first Asian nation to have done it successfully. Two other Asian nations namely Japan and China had tried it in 1992 and 2003 respectively but both the efforts failed like many such efforts by other nations. United States had four failed missions before succeeding in early sixties.
Many nations including China and Pakistan sent their congratulatory messages to India for the sort of feat it had managed with the success with China calling India’s Mars mission Mangalyaan a ‘jewel of Asia’. It was really disappointing to see a racially inspired cartoon in New York Times trying to belittle Indian achievement in space. It is needless to say that the newspaper has been pulled badly by many people on social media handles like Twitter and Facebook. The worst thing was the fact that this racial cartoon was published while the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was there enjoying Obama hospitality.
But it seems that many of our readers don’t really find the article offensive. “I do not think it’s a racism — the actual meaning of this cartoon is some white apes are discussing on different projects (& how to bully their governments, in the name of science). They also invited India. But ISRO has sent a Bull to represent in that meeting, considering it has the AT PAR intelligence of those apes. That’s all” says a reader.
Another reader while talking about the cartoon says, “Come on Indian media should lighten up a bit. It is a cartoon, there is nothing racist in it; I understand we Indians have poor sense of humour, but this accusation on NYT is a bit stretched. Fox News and it’s publications will definitely make it racist, but not NYT; the newspaper has genuinely shown how in spite of being poor India has managed to achieve it and showed that the ‘snobby Elite’ are being matched by a poor country. Stop making it a big deal and show your weakness in understanding humour”.
Nom, another reader says, “Can you please explain me how exactly did you find this racist and offensive. On the contrary, I found it to be in a lighter tone depicting how Indians with all their poverty are able to send a space mission and is now knocking on the doors of Elite space club which was previously confined to other countries (read US, russia etc). The farmer shown in the picture also pretty neatly describes what majority of the Indians are involved with – agriculture. Yes, get out of your AC office and go to rural India (where most of the population is). By calling this racist you are either a) Not identifying with your cultural roots b) You are just a pretentious idiot who have absolutely no knowledge of journalism. You are just spreading hate on the internet. Stop this mob mentality where you make anything said against Indians into a big deal.”
Arun who seems to be very well aware of Indian’s contribution in almost every industry in US says, “Wonder who the cartoonist is? Non Resident Indian? Outsourced?”
