India is again being roped into Cartoon Controversy. This time it is Tamil vs Hindi sentiments being exploited by Politicians to gain followers.
DMK President M Karunanidhi has demanded the removal of a Cartoon by famous Cartoonist R K Laxman to be removed from Class 12 books of NCERT.
DMK is a key ally of the present UPA Government and it has a major say in its day-to-day decision making process.
This Cartoon first appeared in 1965 when Tamil Nadu witnessed serious anti-Hindi agitations state wide  resulting in several deaths in police firing on the protesters. The Anti-Hindi Agitation was one of the major factor which brought DMK to the Power.
The cartoon  gives an impression that the agitating students do not understand even English while agitating against Hindi.
DMK president M. Karunanidhi feels that this cartoon  hurts people’s sentiments. In a statement  Karunanidhi said: “The central government should intervene and remove the cartoon, respecting the sentiments of the Tamils.”
According to Karunanidhi, the cartoon in the Class 12 political science textbook prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has hurt the sentiments of people and has caused deep anguish.The credit for the agitation against the imposition of Hindi in the state goes to the DMK.
Speaking to IANS, DMK spokesperson T.K.S. Elangovan said: “I have asked my people to get all the political science textbooks of NCERT for checking. Cartoons should not form part of any textbook.”
Elangovan said cartoons are a comment by a newspaper on an event and their relevance is of a temporary nature.
“Putting them in textbooks would result in distortion of history and the students getting confused,” he added.
Even during the 1930s – prior to Indian independence in 1947 – the erstwhile Madras Presidency witnessed anti-Hindi agitations when the then Congress government wanted introduction of Hindi in schools.
MDMK general secretary Vaiko also demanded the immediate removal of the controversial cartoon from the NCERT textbook on the grounds that it distorts history and hurts the sentiments of the people.
In a press release, Vaiko said the protest was to condemn the cartoon that distorted history and ridiculed the student agitators of Tamil Nadu. “The cartoon hurts the Tamil sentiments and insulted the student agitators by giving the impression that they neither knew English (nor Hindi), but were demanding English,” he said.
In his letter to Sibal and NCERT ((National Council of Education Research and Training) director Prof Parvin Sinclair, Vaiko said, “The cartoon depicts Tamil students in poor light.” Eight people in Tamil Nadu had committed self-immolation during an agitation in the 1960s to oppose imposition of Hindi.
“There were lakhs of students who participated in the anti-Hindi agitation and they had good knowledge of English. The protest was mainly to ensure Tamil as the official language and English to remain as official language until then. They feared that if Hindi became country’s official language, the Tamils would become secondary citizens,” Vaiko said.
He said even C.Rajagopalachari, who first advocated teaching of Hindi in schools in the 1930s, later opposed it in 1960s.
Last month, it was a Tamil party, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, which is a UPA ally, and the Tamil Nadu unit of the CPM that kicked up a furore over a 1949 cartoon published in an NCERT textbook showing Jawaharlal Nehru and Ambedkar in the context of the slow progress in the framing of the Constitution after Independence.