Letters: Comic farce

The HRD minister’s craven acquiescence to politicians who, as usual, indulged in caste politics by whipping up emotions over a 60-year-old cartoon was surprising (“Open to ridicule,” May 13). It was even more disturbing to see parliamentarians across party lines take umbrage at the cartoon. Why should B R Ambedkar, who celebrated the “Day of Deliverance” alongside Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1939, be handled with kid gloves by political commentators and cartoonists when even Mahatma Gandhi doesn’t enjoy such immunity? The fact is that Ambedkar’s role in writing our Constitution has been exaggerated over the years. If at all the cartoon should be removed from textbooks, it should be for erroneously depicting Ambedkar as the driving force behind the drafting of our Constitution.

Ajay Tyagi, Mumbai

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