Indian ministers rebuke Der Spiegel for racist cartoon
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The German magazine has been accused of defaming India with a cartoon portraying China's population overtaken by India.
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People on a street near the Jama Masjid in the old quarters of New Delhi on April 19, 2023 (AFP)
A cartoon in the German magazine Der Spiegel mocking India as it overtakes China in population has been condemned as "racist" by Indian politicians.
The cartoon depicts a decrepit old Indian railway crammed with passengers, with swarms of individuals on it. A sleek Chinese bullet train with only two drivers is observed on a parallel track, seeming shocked at the sight of the Indian train.
According to United Nations predictions released on Monday, India's population has surpassed China for the first time.
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The cartoon published in Der Spiegel shows an Indian passenger train overtaking a Chinese bullet train.
The senior advisor to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Kanchan Gupta, tweeted his opinion that the cartoon is "outrageously racist".
👋🏽#Germany this is outrageously racist. @derspiegel caricaturing India in this manner has no resemblance to reality. Purpose is to show #India down and suck up to #China.
— Kanchan Gupta 🇮🇳 (@KanchanGupta) April 23, 2023
This is as bad if not worse than the racist cartoon in @nytimes lampooning India’s successful Mars mission. pic.twitter.com/z9MxcPQC7u
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister for electronics and information technology, also tweeted that it was "not smart to bet against India," arguing that its economy will surpass Germany's soon.
Some Indians pointed out that during crowded festivals when millions of Indians rush home, some trains actually resemble the one in the cartoon.
Western criticism has always irritated Indian rulers, but the hostility is considerably stronger under Narendra Modi.
Any unfavorable coverage, such as the recent BBC documentary India: The Modi Question, which investigated the Prime Minister's participation in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots, is looked at as a malevolent plot to discredit Modi and, by extension, India.
Read more: Twitter accused of mass censorship on anti-Modi rhetoric in India
Modi repeated the same allegation during an election rally in Assam in 2021, claiming that Indian tea and yoga were being disparaged by outsiders.
Modi said, “These days there are conspiracies against the nation. They are trying to malign the image of Indian tea worldwide. Some documents have revealed that such conspiracy is being hatched by forces sitting in a foreign land."
The New York Times published a cartoon in 2014 belittling India's achievement in placing a robotic probe into orbit around Mars. It featured an Indian farmer with a cow banging on the door of the Elite Space Club suite. Following protests, the newspaper issued an apology.
