The entire cartoon uses exaggerated stereotypes to make a point. If you think the depiction of the snobbish elite is okay, you're just falling into the "it's only racism if I don't like it" nonsense.
I don't think the cartoon is racist or offensive. I was trying to explain why some people found it distasteful. And stereotyping someone as elite is surely not the same thing as stereotyping someone as poor?
To add some nuance, I think the cartoon goes both ways, but unintentionally managed to offend Indian sensibilities by portraying them that way.
I think one way to look at it is... The underdog Indians managing to rub shoulders with the likes of NASA and ESA at a fraction of the latter's budget, which isn't wrong. ISRO's missions are typically about two orders of magnitude cheaper than NASA's, while still being very productive.
Somehow threads about India just devolve into ridiculous mudslinging like no other. White people clinging to tired old stereotypes. Indians are half to blame too, being over-sensitive and oddly conservative.
> Somehow threads about India just devolve into ridiculous mudslinging like no other. White people clinging to tired old stereotypes. Indians are half to blame too, being over-sensitive and oddly conservative.
There is an additional factor. Anglophone internet tends to be dominated by Americans. So, discussions about say Denmark don't get too heated because there aren't too many Danes participating.
>>> I think one way to look at it is... The underdog Indians managing to rub shoulders with the likes of NASA and ESA at a fraction of the latter's budget,
How are you getting this through the cartoon? All the cartoon shows is a poor asking for permission to get into an elite club
When Pakistan successfully became a nuclear capable nation in 2000s, Indians had the same reactions - to laugh at their stupidity of misplaced priorities.
The cartoon is trying to make an invalid point and insult India with their joke, that is how it became racist. It did not become racist by the idea of painting a set of people with broad brush.
The cartoon shows an unwelcome 'Indian' is knocking the door of super powers to be let in the elite club room amusing those inside it. If this is the case it is a huge discouragement for India because no matter what we do, even without any cheap superficial attempt to impress other countries, we will be mocked at with backdrop of embarrassing history that is no longer true and widespread as they make it seem to drive home the point with. This callousness is what makes NYT
racist.
Is it not racist to think India is hungry and desperate for power recognition, show off and then being complacent after like the people inside the room?
The subsequent money we get from West to deploy their payloads through the same advanced missions was also improving our poverty and cheaper for them .
Apart from mere recognition of a fact of our achievement, we know we have other problems we are famous for and funded by International bodies, including West themselves. So what makes NYT want to rub the salt into the wound in as if we forgot, at a time of celebration? Where else is it coming from, if not from the place of disdain onto this other nation?
You have to have some special kind of psychopathy to make fun of other country's poverty when they do know that the space missions are conducted after calculating all the costs and SWOT analysis taking into account of such poverty. Or do you think we are not intelligent enough for that?
It is this contemptuousness that I call NYT racist, not the one you elaborated upon.
Please stop this spreading this non-sensical misinformation.
The cartoon shows two formal dressed westerners in elite space club room startled by one uneducated man knocking with a dhoti and starving sleepy cow he catches by a rope just like village people used to do strolling on the streets of the past.
Is this the research you do to depict our Indian scientists and leaders or is it the idea that elitist differentiation of class, wealth and societal backwardness was to be shown here?
Besides, nowhere on the article it mentions that they have done their homework based on this story. Cows were not used. Open Bullock carts were used. Do you think putting a bullock cart in a cartoon would have been more difficult task to achieve than putting a Chandrayan on Moon? But no, you just have to stick to stereotype and squeeze out a rational meaning from it.
Give me a good citation and accuse me of throwing the racism card around.
You are mistaken it's not a lazy stereotype, the cartoonist has done his/her research. India has literally used cows for testing its initial satellites.
