National Cartoon Museum thrown open for visitors

The National Cartoon Museum and Art Gallery, set up as a tribute to doyen of Indian political cartooning Shankar at his hometown here, has been opened for visitors.

The memorial was inaugurated by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy at a function here last evening and was attended, among others, by family members of Shankar.

A collection of cartoons drawn by Shankar and drawing material and tools he used were handed over to the museum by his family members at the function.

K Shankara Pillai, who pioneered political cartooning in India and ran the widely-appreciated Shankar's Weekly for long, was born in Kayamkulam in Alappuzha district in 1905.

He spent his formative years in the sylvan settings of the area and acknowledged that its cultural ambience influenced him to become a cartoonist.

Shankar ran his famous Weekly, known as the Indian version of Punch, whose regular readers included the first premier Jawaharlal Nehru, for several decades before it was closed down during the Emergency period in 1975.