NEW DELHI: Political cartoonist Ajit Ninan was best known for drawing the Centrestage series of cartoons in the India Today magazine. Ninan’s pen and the steady stream of political cartoons and caricatures that flowed from it have finally been set aside with his passing away in Mysuru on September 8.
Ninan’s humour was gentle but incisive —he knew how to take aim, but it was never for the low. From Indira Gandhi to Vajpayee to Narendra Modi, few prime ministers have escaped his caricature but the style was always impartial.
Ninan also got a recall each time cartoonists faced government ire. His cartoon of jail inmates doubling up in laughter while looking at a drawing of a jailer in underwear with the accompanying caption, “Never put a cartoonist behind bars” was a comic benchmark.