New Delhi: Cartoonist Rachita Taneja, the creator of webcomic Sanitary Panels, won the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award on Friday (May 3) alongside fellow cartoonist Zunzi from Hong Kong.
Taneja shot to fame with her stick figure characters accompanied with key political commentary on issues like authoritarianism, corruption, misogyny, and homophobia, among others.
In 2020, she drew the ire of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Supreme Court for posting cartoons that were critical of the top court’s role in a case concerning Republic TV presenter Arnab Goswami. Then Attorney General K.K. Venugopal had initiated contempt proceedings against Taneja over the drawings for which she faces up to six months of imprisonment.
The award was announced on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. India ranks 159 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Index 2024, a notch above its rank of 161 in 2023.
“With violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment, press freedom is in crisis in “the world’s largest democracy”, ruled since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the BJP and embodiment of the Hindu nationalist right,” RSF said while releasing the data on Friday.
Taneja, who has been routinely critical of the government through her cartoons, had told The Wire last year, “If political cartoonists have to sing the praises of those in power, they would not be political cartoonists at all; they would be propaganda machines. R.K. Laxman never minced his words while criticising those in power, and that is the point of political and editorial cartoonists. It’s to comment and criticise, satirise current affairs and make people question whether the people we voted to serve us are doing their jobs.”
Over the last month, her comics have focussed on the mammoth election exercise underway in the country. “There is a lot of worrying news coming out about the transparency on how polling is being done by the Election Commission, the body that carries out the election. So that’s been front and centre in my mind,” she told Barron’s.
“When mainstream journalists are not able to do their job, or they have been influenced to only report a certain way about the ruling party, I think it’s important for cartoonists to step in and take on the responsibility of talking about what’s actually going on,” she said.