The selected cartoons appeared first in other publications, either in print or online, or on social media, and are credited appropriately.
In today’s featured cartoon, Sandeep Adhwaryu takes a jibe at the ‘glorification‘ of Hindu Mahasabha ideologue Vinayak Savarkar in a revised Class 8 textbook, while referring to the Wright brothers’ historic first airplane flight on December 17, 1903. A paragraph in the revised Kannada textbook suggested that Savarkar ‘flew out’ of the Andaman cellular jail, where he was imprisoned by the British, on the “wings” of bulbul birds.
R. Prasad highlights how the US mourned the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev — who presided over the disintegration of the Soviet Union — by referring to him as the man whose “openness changed the course of human history”, while back in Russia, President Vladimir Putin decided not to attend Gorbachev’s funeral.
E. P. Unny, too, alludes to the demise of Mikhail Gorbachev, but with a message for the Congress party that has seen its electoral fortunes decline since the Indira Gandhi years, which coincided with the pre-Gorbachev years of the Soviet Union.
Satish Acharya delivers his take on how critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi accuse his government of ‘shifting goalposts‘ — a reference to the PM‘s Independence Day speech in which he expressed his ambitious target of making India a developed nation by 2047.
Sajith Kumar draws on how rains have wreaked havoc in Bengaluru in the form of severe waterlogging and traffic snarls days after an association of contractors associated with the Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) alleged that corruption in the civic body has gone up with officers demanding 40-50 per cent “commission” to clear files.