A COMPARATIVE THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL CARTOONS IN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Abstract

Political cartoons are powerful visual discourses where political ideologies are conveyed, where authority is satirized, and where social-cultural tensions are expressed. Cartoons in South Asia especially in India and Pakistan also dominate the ways in which people perceive leadership, governance and nationalism. This study explores the thematic variations in political cartoons that have appeared in Indian and Pakistani newspapers in the years (2020, 2021, 2022, & 2024) with respect to how satire, symbolism and humor discern political narratives and politician’s ideological positions. Thematic analysis was used in analyzing 120 political cartoons gathered on The Times of India, The Hindu, Dawn, and The Nation. The critical discourse approach by Fairclough (2013) and multimodal visual grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) were used in the analysis. The results show that Indian cartoons are characterized by the focus on leadership caricature and populist criticism, whereas Pakistani cartoons prefer the symbolic images and institutional comment. The research finds that political cartoons are visual representations of national ideology and opposition, and represent a comparative study of the cultures of political communication in India and Pakistan.