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[ From the archives of the Times of India]

Nehru knew how to laugh at himself: Indira

Shankar, the renowned cartoonist of 1950s and 60s, did not even spare Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India. And Nehru, apparently, did not mind it.

A volume of Shankar’s cartoons of Nehru was published by Children’s Book Trust in 1983 with both the blessings and a foreword from Indira Gandhi. “Don’t Spare Me Shankar” is a compilation of about 400 of the 1,500 cartoons Shankar drew of Nehru, most of them for his magazine, “Shankar’s Weekly”.

The book has long been outof-print but it contains an extraordinary testament to the fact that Congress leaders were once capable of understanding and appreciating the art of political cartooning. Gandhi’s brief note is generously sprinkled with praise of Shankar’s work and states categorically that Nehru “enjoyed a hearty laugh — often at his own expense.” The 21st century Congressmen, however,seem to be a lesstolerant breed. Indira, too, had found herself at the sharp end of Shankar’s satire many times. But she didn’t seem to have held any lasting grudges. As she writes in the book’s foreward, she understood that “[t]here cannot be cartoon without certain amount of irreverence.” “Cartoonists have become an integral part of the intellectual life of a modern society. Some draw without intent to draw blood; some remove masks and hold a mirror to the face of society,” she writes. Nehru had given the cartoonist carte blanche to lampoon him by saying the words that later became the book’s title. He had said, “Don’t spare me Shankar” at the launch of Shankar’s Weekly in May, 1948. “From Jawaharlal Nehru, he got affection and even indulgence,” writes Indira. She wrote the foreword years after Shankar’s Weekly had packed up, closed within a month of the start of the Emergency. Its closure had prompted her to write to Shankar. In a letter dated July 26, 1975 — the period of the Emergency had started on June 26 — she wrote, “I learnt a few days ago about your decision to stop Shankar’s Weekly and I have just seen the farewell note in your issue of July 27. It takes a great deal of strength of mind to close down what one has built through years of care and labour. You are the best judge. As you say, it is too much for one man even when that man is an institution. We shall miss the journal.”

“Turning over its pages,” she writes further, “We relive the controversies of yesterday — the vanities of some, and the intrinsic strength of the man who stood above them in large-heartedness, ability and vision.”