The latest issue of The Hindu Group’s Frontline magazine has come under fire for its depiction of a Brahmin on its cover page illustration – inspired by Edvard Munch’s famous artwork The Scream.

Titled “Outraged”, the issue looked at the “anger of dominant castes that has stalled the UGC Regulations” and “stalled the last-mile delivery of Article 14”. Days later, pro-Hindutva accounts termed the illustration “Nazi-type”. 

A portal called The Commune put out an article claiming the newspaper group has “gone on to become a Leftist-Dravidianist rag peddling propaganda”. The article described the illustration as “a grotesque caricature” of a Brahmin figure “complete with exaggerated cultural markers – styled in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of early 20th-century racial propaganda”.

Newslaundry reached out to Vaishna Roy, editor of the magazine, and the illustrator, to understand how they view the outrage.

Roy said the outrage against the cover image is nothing but a deflection from the UGC regulations that have been stayed. She also said the image was republished with permission from anti-caste portal The Ambedkarian Chronicle and was a “clever adaptation” of Munch’s iconic painting already in the public domain. 

“If the Nazis mocked the Jews, it was a majoritarian community that was in power and was mocking and demonising a minority community that it had subjugated. Here, it is a marginalised and oppressed community that is talking back to power via such imagery.”

Disagreeing with The Commune’s interpretation, Roy pointed out the contrast saying, “Across the sub-continent, the janeu and shikha are worn by men of dwija or twice-born castes – Brahmins, Bhumihars, Kshatriyas, Kayasthas, Vaishyas, etc. The image is a representational device used in film, plays, cartoons to depict the idea of a devout and dominant Hindu person. In that sense, it is now a social semiotic often used to foreground the contradiction of demonstrative spirituality going hand in hand with disgraceful and unjust public behaviour.”

Roy said the illustration was in keeping with a “well-known artistic practice of using highly recognisable symbols/artworks and giving them a political or satirical spin, whether on posters, cartoons, illustrations, or magazine covers”. Highlighting previous examples, she added, “Marcel Duchamp’s LHOOQ showed a moustachioed Mona Lisa. The New Yorker 1999 cover featured Monica Lewinsky as Mona Lisa. The Simpsons lampooned Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper placing Homer Simpson in Christ’s place with Marge as Mary Magdalene.”

Shripad Sinnakaar, the 27-year-old editor of The Ambedkarian Chronicle, said the illustration was part of a series on UGC and was designed for Kalpana Kannabiran's article titled 'Hostile Environments and Brahmanical Enclosures: The Fear of Equality'. 

“The title had the word ‘fear’ in it, and so many of our creatives are interpolations of popular media, so we knew instantly what to make for this one. It wasn’t with an intent of malice for any upper caste – just the way they victimised themselves over Equity regulation, this backlash seems an extension of that.”

Countering the comparison to Nazi-era caricatures, Sinnakaar pointed to a “tendency” to “perform woundedness in order to maintain their power”. “Such comparison only reveals their own moral depravity.”

Asked how the Ambedkarian Chronicle distinguishes between critiquing power structures and portraying communities, Sinnakaar explained, “We let our submissions guide the creatives…we are an independent collective and our primary reader is a caste oppressed person. We are barely three people running this magazine in whatever time we get…We think this backlash is symptomatic of what is wrong in the structures, but to provoke it is not the preoccupation of our editorial...Brahmins themselves constitute the apex of power structure that should be critiqued, a site where capital and hegemony historically have been concentrated.”

Asked if there could have been a supposedly less “offensive” illustration, Roy said, “All editors know that there can be several options for cover designs. The cover has to condense and compress the content of its cover story in the most economical and effective way without clutter or confusion or ambiguity. In this case, our focus was on ‘the scream’. The ‘scream’ that should rise in the hearts of every patriotic Indian at the tragedy of the UGC regulations being stayed. And the actual ‘scream’ by dominant castes protesting against the regulations. The real ‘offence’ is the gap between these two screams. It’s a pity that a motivated segment has chosen to ‘take offence’ to hide the bigger offence taking place.”

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