There must be freedom for creative expression: Bangla cartoonist

Eminent Bangladeshi cartoonist Rafiqun Nabi, creator of his country’s longest survived cartoon character “Tokai”, a street urchin who has become the nation’s social conscience keeper, on Wednesday advocated freedom for creative expression as he condemned attacks on artists, writers and scholars.

Bangladeshi cartoonist Rafiqun Nabi.

Commenting on several writers returning Sahitya Akademi Awards in protest of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi’s murder, Nabi said: “Although I do not know about this event, as an artist I feel that each artist has his own creative instincts and that such kind of a reaction should not be there. You cannot stop creativity by attacking or killing as it is no good. We are free thinking people and deal with issues that also relate to common people, and certain things we do comes from the pain of an artist… The biggest reaction I have faced for my work was by former Bangladeshi president Hussain Muhaamed Ershad. He had requested me to stop doing Tokai’s as he might have felt it could go against him.”

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On his maiden trip to Gujarat, Nabi, credited for promoting contemporary art in Bangladesh, said, “Despite being a street urchin, Tokai picks words and ideas from others around him. Even a lot of Bangladeshi politicians now use words of Tokai in their speeches. Tokai will soon be coming in form of a book in India, Nepal and Bhutan. ”

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The eminent cartoonist, who was chief guest at the 5th edition of “Chitrakatha-2015”, International Students’ Animation Film Festival at NID, also inaugurated an exhibition, The World of Tokai, on his cartoon and other works.

The five-day festival saw 270 film entries from 20 countries and eminent speakers from the field of animation, such as Mohamed Ghazala from Egypt, Jurgen Haas and Francois Chalet from Switzerland, and Doris Cleven from Belgium.