The proposed Statue of Equality at Dadar-s Indu Mill compound to mark Dr BR Ambedkar-s contribution to the fight against social injustice got a 100-ft fillip this week — the bronze structure will now be taller than New York-s Statue of Liberty. This, of course, is one more addition to the countless statues of Ambedkar that dot India, depicting the architect of the Indian Constitution with his magnum opus in one hand and showing the nation the way forward with the other. We may still be far removed from the principles he strove to set Indians on the path of, but symbolism is an art we have mastered.

It-s ironic then that it was through the symbolic language of cartoons that the national leader was subjected to brazen hostility and prejudice in his time. The veneration we now associate with Ambedkar was largely posthumous; first came the barbs. The country got a glimpse of it in 2012, when the inclusion of a 1949 cartoon by K Shankar Pillai showing Jawaharlal Nehru whipping a snail-borne Ambedkar in a school textbook, evoked Dalit protest. But the debate acquired a tone of freedom of expression, and the cartoon continued to be viewed in isolation. That is, until cartoonist and researcher Unnamati Syama Sundar decided to do something about it.