Page 246 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

5

CARTOON AND CARICATURE

Mahmudul Hossain

The practice of cartoons, in the formal sense, is not very old among the Bengali
speaking people. Our urban civilization and all its attributes have developed through
the courtesy of the European colonizers. Even Bengali prose developed in this manner.
As a continuation of this process, the publication of newspapers started in this sub-
continent in the 19th century under the direct supervision of English colonizers.
Naturally, the first cartoons appeared in print on those newspapers.
Nevertheless, there was no shortage of humor, banter and sarcasm in the social life of
Bengal. The source of the word ‘maskari’ which is widely used in the same sense as
fun and banter proves, according to historian Dineshchandra Sen, that, ‘Since the age fig. 5.1 Bat-tala print
of Buddha we know of a group of people whose business it was to
show pictures to people to educate them. They had the title of
“Maskari”…. Thus the utterances they made to make the audience and
viewers laugh has come to be known by their name. Even now people
use the word “thatta-maskari” (fun and banter).’ [Trans.] There is an
1
age old tradition of mockery and oblique comments about
contemporary issues, social taboos and traditions in folk-songs,
rhymes and in the making of folk dolls. The Bolan songs of Radha
(western part of Bengal) which were sung at the market place or in the
courtyard of the very landlord against whom the complaints were
lodged, the Gambhira of North Bengal, the Gajan songs or the songs
of the sang (clowns) sung in the month of Chaitra bear the examples
of such tradition. Folk dolls were made on different village festivals
with oblique references or satire about the landlord, the marriage of
rich old men with young girls and the sloppy moral characters of the
widowed daughters of the Brahmins. On the other hand, the children’s
rhymes of Bengal contained, along with innocent humor, very sharp
social comments intermingled with them, the visual expression of
which was also very strong.
The tradition of sarcasm and humor in Bengali prose was already
present. ‘The cartoons inherited an earlier tradition of literary
parodies; they were pictorial equivalent of Naba Babu Bilas, Naba