Controversial cartoons: From arrests to murder attempts

New Delhi, May 11 (IANS) A cartoon on Dalit icon Dr. B.R. Ambedkar printed in a textbook created a storm Friday forcing the Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal to apologise.

The old cartoon, by renowned cartoonist Shankar, depicts Nehru, with a whip in his hand, chasing Ambedkar, who is seated on a snail. In the cartoon, Nehru is asking Ambedkar to speed up the work on the constitution.

Here are some of the other controversial caricatures and cartoons that created a furore in India and around the world, leading to arrests and even murder attempts:

-- A Jadavpore University professor, Ambikesh Mahapatra and his neighbour were arrested last month in Kolkata for circulating defamatory cartoons of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and some other Trinamool Congress leaders.

The collage of cartoons allegedly includes the photographs of Banerjee and Railway Minister Mukul Roy and uses some dialogues of Satyajit Ray's detective masterpiece "Sonar Kella", showing the duo discussing how to get rid of party leader Dinesh Trivedi, who was earlier forced by the chief minister to give up the railways portfolio in the central government. 'Mukul' is incidentally the name of the child protagonist in the movie.

-- Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard made international headlines after the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 published a series of cartoons, including one showing Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. The cartoons outraged many Muslims. The newspaper and cartoonist have since been the targets of many thwarted attacks.

-- Swedish cartoon artist Lars Vilks became the target of an alleged international murder plot for his 2007 cartoons of Prophet Mohammed as a dog. In 2010, he again angered Muslims by showing an Iranian film that depicted the Prophet entering a gay bar at a university in Sweden.