Lions and Bears: The World Wars in Malayalam Cartoons

Titled Mahakshamadevatha or “The Great Famine Goddess” (Vidooshakan, October 1919), the first cartoon published in Malayalam depicted the impact of the First World War in the south-western coastal region of the Indian sub-continent that we now know as the state of Kerala. By the Second World War, cartoons had become a mainstay in Malayalam humour magazines – especially those like Sanjayan, Vishwaroopam and Naradar. An overview of these cartoons shows a continued preoccupation with the Second World War, sometimes in considerable and unexpected detail. While Vidooshakan was the first to publish a cartoon in Malayalam, Sanjayan and Vishwaroopam were the most accomplished both in terms of the technical quality of their cartoons as well as the frequency with which they published cartoons. Naradar stood out with its bilingual nature, whereby they published materials in Malayalam as well as in English. This is particularly interesting for the current paper, since their English articles were almost always on international issues. These journals therefore form the crux of this paper. Cartoon’s inherent nature is often opinionated, biased and even judgmental, and one of the earliest magazines to wield this weapon in all its glory was the British magazine Punch. Scholars agree unanimously that the medium of cartooning came to India from Britain. Amidst the plethora of works that approach the World Wars from closer quarters, this material stands apart in that it studies the conflicts through the perspective provided by analysts and cartoonists who were located in a region that was spatially removed from where the war was raging. A study of Malayalam cartoons on the world wars therefore offers a different take on events, providing us with an opening to study the point of view of the vernacular public regarding the war that raged across the world. This will allow the article to approach these cartoons as primary archival sources and to interpret them as materials reflecting and influencing popular culture.