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India’s Success on Chandrayaan-3 Mission, NYT at Receiving End

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Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Aug 24: As India is celebrating the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, the New York Times is at the receiving end having mocked the India’s previous space mission of putting a robotic to probe into Mars.

As Vikram landed on the moon on Wednesday making India the first country in the world to land a spacecraft in the hitherto unexplored South Pole region of celestial object, many social media users shared a cartoon the US-based celebrated newspaper had published way back in 2014 following India’s success on the Mangalayaan mission.

India had completed the mission putting the robotic to orbit around Mars in just Rs 450 crores making it one of the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever as the previous Mars explorers the US, Russia and Europe had spent much more than India to achieve the goal. The NYT had made it the subject matter of the cartoon showing a man, dressed as an Indian villager with a cow, knocking on the door of “Elite Space Club” where two men in western clothes sat.

Many had then felt that the cartoon was to mock at India and had triggered strong protests. Several Indian readers had accused the renowned newspaper of being racist and mocking India after its stellar space achievement.

The outrage forced an apology from the NYT and Andrew Rosenthal, the then editorial page editor of New York Times, said in a Facebook post 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 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,” he had said. Rosenthal had said Heng “was in no way trying to impugn India, its government or its citizens.”

As Chandrayaan-3 touched down near the southern pole of the Moon, making India the first country to do so, Twitter users dug out the old cartoon, tagged NYT and said it is time for a new cartoon. Among them was Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader Y Sathish Reddy. “You chuckled, questioning our capabilities. Today, we silence you with our triumph! Now, go ahead & sketch a fresh cartoon,” he posted on X, sharing the old cartoon.

Three Years later, the Times of India gave a reply to the NYT cartoon when in 2017 India put a record-breaking 104 satellites in space with a single rocket. The TOI cartoon showed the Indian man and his cow inside the space club and two men who in the NYT cartoon seen seated inside were in TOI cartoon shown as knocking on the door of “Elite Space Club”, eager to get in.

Some Twitter users even shared the TOI cartoon with an altered version showing that many developed countries were now seeking India’s advice on how to land a spacecraft near the Moon’s South Pole.

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