Racist much? Australian daily’s cartoon shows Indians eating solar panels!

However, the cartoon has been criticised for being racist, and netizens took to Twitter to condemn the picture drawn by The Australian cartoonist Bill Leak. Last week, another cartoon portraying India as an elephant which had blocked the tracks for the climate change deal in the New York Times had received some criticism, too.

World-wide condemnation is pouring-in for a cartoon in “The Australian” depicting skinny, turban-wearing Indians eating solar panels. Many have branded the cartoon as racist and rebuked it as a 1950s stereotype. The caption below reads Aid A La Mode, roughly, “Fashionable Aid”.

Amanda Wise, associate professor of sociology at Macquarie University, told Guardian Australia that the drawing would be unacceptable in the USA or the UK.

The cartoon shows an emaciated Indian family breaking up solar panels and one person trying to eat them with “mango chutney”.

Angry internet users even tampered will Bill Leak’s Wikipedia page, adding racism as a characteristic.

India, with a population of more than a billion people, has some of the highest carbon emissions of any country in the world.

The new editor-in-chief of The Australian, Paul Whittaker, stood by the cartoon, which was published on his first day at the helm of the national paper after a move from Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph.

Leak, who has been accused of becoming more right wing in recent years, especially since he suffered a serious head injury in 2008, has so far declined to comment on the controversy. “Shows complete ignorance of India and insults every Indian”.

“India has not only been a sophisticated negotiator on climate change, insisting “developed” nations pay their dues for destroying the planet, it has also voluntarily started adopting renewables like solar energy in hundreds of villages”.

The Australian released a statement to Crikey saying it stood by the cartoon, which it said ridiculed climate change activists, not Indian people, which their readers would have understood.

The cartoon has triggered wave of protests on social media with people questioning the racist tinge in the creatives used by the cartoonist, which according to them is hammering the stereotyped perceptions regarding third world countries.