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Interview

The lighter side of life

Rafiqun Nabi talks about cartoons

Fayza Haq
TALKING about a recent workshop on cartoons in India, Rafiqun Nabi says, "This concentrated on the South East Asian region like India, Pakistan, Nepal and such places. The subject was freedom of the press and this was held in Bangalore in the Maxmuller Bhaban and was organised by the Goethe Institut. We worked in our different ways, some dealing with politics and others based their work on socio-political themes. There were eight main cartoonists. This was definitely different from other workshops on cartoons or prints such as the ones I had attended at Montenegro or Bangkok, and we discussed various aspects of cartoons, such as howfar to go in criticism Franziska Becker
from Germany and I had been the main speakers. Punnappa from India had also a hand in conducting the sessions. Cartoonists are witty people and the programme was consequently an enjoyable one. One learnt a lot from the exchange of ideas. We learnt of different perspectives and backgrounds of how to present a serious aspect of life in a light way."
Speaking of how he had gone into cartoons, Rafiqun Nabi says, "As a student in school I was attracted to drawings in illustrated classics and comics for young readers. This went hand in hand with the prints of the works of artists like Nanda Lal, Jamini Roy and Ramkingkor. The daily newspapers also came up with cartoons as Aziz's works in 'The Morning News'. Thus I was exposed to cartoons quite early in life and was fascinated by them. There were a lot of upheavals in the sixties which ushered in the need for cartoons. I started making posters for the processions specially during the month of February. There were the 'little magazines' too. Kalam Mahmud, whose drawings were good and whose wit was sharp, and I from the Art College, began doing cartoons from the 60s.
" Before us artists like Quamrul Hassan had worked on cartoons too. Zainul Abedin too had gone into this line. Abul Kashem, a senior artist had tried his hand in this too. Artists, like Jamil, who has now gone overseas, worked on the subject of romance and this too was enjoyable. Subas Dutt of the films, also began his career as a cartoonist. Mustafa Manwar worked under the penname of 'Montu'. As these artists had other involvement they did not take cartoons all that seriously. I joined up with the Observer group, working for Chitrali and Purbodesh. My cartoon
the language too. Going to Greece in 1973 for printmaking put a break in my career as a cartoonist. Coming back to Bangladesh, under economic pressure and persuasion of the newspaper owners I began my'Tokai' series which became popular.
"As I do the 'Tokai' cartoons I was strangely enough called to Mexico as a judge, where they dealt with the issue of exploitation of children in countries like Brazil and Bangladesh, when the children are pushed into labour instead of being sent to school. This too enriched my experiences."
Asked to touch on his woodcuts for which he is famous, Rafiqun Nabi says, "This has been in ourculturefor centuries and had been used for book illustrations and mastheads of newspapers. In Greece, I learnt to do woodcut in big proportions and in multicolours under my teacher , Gramatopoulus. Today, young artists
drawings are based on news or some incident. On request I do direct political cartoons too such as the ones on Bush and Saddam. I try to bring in the environment such as the elements of price hike and mosquitoes. Birds, animals and humans all come under this criterion.
"To execute the conceived idea takes a lot of time and thought. I have to think of characters, situations and captions. Some are obvious while the others are subtle. There is play with
like Mokhlis and Anis are doing good work in this media. Before them, Abdus Sattar and Quamrul Hassan had done wonderful work in woodcut."
Apart from woodcut, Rafiqun Nabi works in all mediums including water colour, oil and mixed media. Today, he is a professor of Drawing and Painting at the Institute of Fine Arts, DU.