Page 254 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

CARTOON AND CARICATURE 251

our social life continuously for about three decades now. It is a matter of surprise that
no other cartoon character has been created yet in our country despite the fact that
since the arrival of Tokai the prestige of cartoons has increased manifold and cartoons
have become much richer.
After 1971, the most important political movement was the one against the dictator
Ershad in 1989-90. After almost 18 years, Quamrul Hassan created another cartoon
type picture which created as great a stir as the one featuring Yahiya titled Annihilate
these Demons (fig. 4.9). This one was called Desh Aj Bishwabehayar Khappare (The
country is in the clutches of the universally shameless one) (fig. 4.10). However, here
he has taken recourse to metaphors.
Since the nineties a democratic process has come into being in our country after
crossing many hurdles and despite having incompleteness and failures, it continues to
thrive. Perhaps the cartoon has become a wide spread phenomenon in the last one and
a half decade as a natural consequence of this process. During this period, political
cartoons have gained wide acceptance. Some of the daily newspapers have played
pioneering roles in this process. Shishir Bhattacharjee has appeared as a political
cartoonist in this period. The originality of his thought process, characteristics of his
drawings have made cartoons an important part of our political culture. The
newspapers which patronize him have played a major role in this. Shishir Bhattacharjee
has done cartoons by matching the portraits of the helmsmen of our society- a trend
which was virtually non-existent in our cartoon culture. This very trend has increased
the acceptability and popularity of the cartoon and reactions to the cartoon has become
multi-dimensional. Although others are doing cartoons based on portraits, the strength fig. 5.14 Shishir
of Shishir’s drawing has given his cartoons a special place in this arena. Shishir Bhattacharjee, ‘Magical
Bhattacharjee started his journey as a cartoonist in the eighties when he was a student. method to frighten the
The students and teachers of the Dhaka University protested strongly against the Government…,’ Dainik
initiative of the military government to reduce the autonomy of the university. At that Prothom Alo, 6 April
time Shishir did a cartoon on this subject in a magazine published by the Dhaka 1999
University Central Students Union.
That cartoon attracted huge attention.
During the later part of the eighties he
started to do cartoons on a regular basis
in the weekly Ekota (The spokesman of
the Communist Party of Bangladesh).
In the nineties he did daily cartoons in
Ajker Kagoj. Later on the dailies Bhorer
Kagoj and Prothom Alo published his
political cartoons (fig. 5.14).
Owing to the success of cartoons by
Shishir, in the last one decade political
cartoons have become an important