Page 252 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

CARTOON AND CARICATURE 249

issues of that period like price hike, hijacking, and power
failure came up as issues in the cartoons published daily
in Dainik Bangla. On the other hand, Aroop and often a
cartoonist named Tofa would do cartoons on direct
political issues. During the later part of the seventies the
artist Rafiqun Nabi (Ranabi) took up the responsibility of
doing daily cartoons in Dainik Bangla. He gradually made
the subject of the cartoons news-centric. For example, a
particular news is published on the newspaper today; a
cartoon containing a sharp comment on this news might
come up in tomorrow’s newspaper. There can be
extraordinary reactions to such cartoons on the fresh news
of the day. However, the challenge for the cartoonist lies
in the fact that s/he has to think of a cartoon within a day.
Nazrul came up as a political cartoonist in the weekly
Bichitra in the seventies. Specially, his cartoons on
international political issues of that period created a new
dimension in the world of cartoons in our country (fig.
5.11). Artists Syed Iqbal, Ahsan Habib, Mamun Reyazi, Reza, Lutful Haque, Sudhir,
Sultan, Rezaun Nabi became known as cartoonists in the seventies and eighties.
Various magazines and periodicals continued to publish cartoons irregularly at that
time. During the period, the weekly Jai Jai Din published cartoons on its cover on a
regular basis. Daily Banglar Bani, weeklies Ekota and Robbar published cartoons at
that time. But it should be remembered that for the greater part of these two decades
our country had an environment of undemocratic and intolerant culture. Naturally,
cartoons, especially political cartoons could not reach the level of maturity that they
should have. We have talked about Dainik Bangla and Bichitra, the two largest patrons
of cartoons in the seventies and eighties and they were owned by a government trust
body. Therefore, the artists who did cartoons for these papers themselves used to
calculate how far they could go. Rafiqun Nabi himself has said that they worked under
self-imposed censorship. Mohammad Jahangir has commented in an article on the
cartoons of the eighties, ‘In the
absence of a conducive
environment an alternate style
of cartoon has developed here.
This is mainly a culture of fig. 5.10 (top) Yunus,
social cartoons. ... these are ‘Thoughts of Yahya,’
basically cartoons on social Bangladesh News
problems. These are aimed at Letter, 10 November
1971
some agency or institution or
at an even more distant target. fig. 5.11 (bottom)
Readers usually smile a little Cartoon, Nazrul, 1978