Chennai: A “racist cartoon” in The Australian newspaper showing starving Indians attempting to eat solar panels with mango chutney has provoked anger in the country.
The Australian is run by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and the cartoon was drawn by Bill Leak, one of Australia’s best-known cartoonists.
The cartoon, published two days after over 190 nations, including India, signed the historic climate change agreement in Paris on Saturday, shows an emaciated Indian family breaking up solar panels and trying to eat them with ‘mango chutney’.
The newspaper now faces a tirade of criticism on social media. David Pope, a cartoonist from the rival newspaper The Canberra Times, said in a tweet: “How backward is Aust #climate politics? Here, the absurd racist rubbish published by Murdoch's national newspaper.”
Amanda Wise, an associate professor of sociology at Macquarie University, said the cartoon would be unacceptable in the UK, the USor Canada.
Earlier in October this year, New York Times published a cartoon showing a turban-clad man with a cow knocking at the door of the “Elite Space Club”, who were reading about India’s mars mission.
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