Following the success of India’s lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, an old cartoon by the US-based daily New York Times (NYT) from 2014 has gone viral, with users terming the nine-year-old cartoon as ‘racist’.
The cartoon showed a farmer with a cow knocking at the door of a room marked ‘Elite Space Club’ where two men can be seen sitting and reading a newspaper which has the text ‘India’s Mars Mission’ written on it.
The NYT had published the cartoon following the success of Mangalyaan mission, which had put a robotic probe into orbit around Mars at the cost of Rs 450 crore, making it one of the cheapest interplanetary missions ever undertaken.
Mangalyaan was launched from the Sriharikota spaceport on November 5, 2013. Prior to India, the US, Russia and Europe had sent missions to planet Mars.
The cartoon had sparked a massive uproar, with people accusing the renowned newspaper of mocking India, following which, NYT had issued an apology.
Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the New York Times, wrote in a Facebook post in 2014 that a “large number of readers” had complained about the cartoon.
“The intent of the cartoonist, Heng Kim Song, was to highlight how space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of rich, Western countries,” Mr Rosenthal said.
“Mr Heng, who is based in Singapore, uses images and text – often in a provocative way – to make observations about international affairs. We apologise to readers who were offended by the choice of images in this cartoon.”
Rosenthal added that Heng “was in no way trying to impugn India, its government or its citizens”.
In a giant leap for its space programme, India’s Moon mission Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the lunar south pole at 6.04 pm on Wednesday, propelling the country to an exclusive club of four and making it the first country to land on the uncharted surface.
With this touchdown on Moon after a flawless 41-day voyage to script history and less than a week after a Russian lander headed to the lunar south pole crashed, India is the fourth country to master the technology of soft-landing on the Moon after the US, China and erstwhile Soviet Union.
Following the stellar achievement, the NYT covered the successful lunar mission, saying, “The Chandrayaan-3 mission makes India the first country to reach the lunar south polar region in one piece and adds to the achievements of the country’s homegrown space programme.”
Here’s how social media users reacted to the cartoon, following the success of Chandrayaan-3.