Der Spiegel: India anger over ‘racist’ German magazine cartoon on population

A good man once said: To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure. So now, in the light of this and the recent reaction to a cartoon depicting a race between two trains which was perhaps as much of a contest as the legendary race in which a man and horse competed to be the first from London to York. To pit a new HSR (‘Bullet’ train) against an old diesel is surely a foregone conclusion, just as the outcome of the horse-man race would have been in the seventeenth century. Oh! distracted again so that my first intended sentence became little more than a noun and a qualifying subordinate clause I should resume where off I had left. So, in the light of the afore described colourful line drawing, if there is any element of race in it, and of course there is but perhaps not in the sense that has been expressed elsewhere, should I not now consider that there is an element of race in all things that are or could be said in the minds of some? It has often been said: ‘it takes one to know one’, but I would add that it is often incorrectly said in order to attribute, perhaps insinuate is a more appropriate word in this context, to attribute to the accuser the imputed qualities of the accused.

Whilst seeking to avoid the claim to any kind of purity in myself, if one sees impurity in a thing that is not in itself impure, does that not in the light of the words of our good and wise man, suggest that there is some impurity in the one who sees what he thinks is a kind of impurity in it? In which case the often ill-used saying: ‘it takes one to know one’ may also in this instance be true, that those who cry wolf are in fact wolves themselves, and that the same kind of impurity that they found in the pure thing is the very impurity which defiles them. But if you simply look at the cartoon as a cartoon depicting a race, is it not simply, purely, funny?

On the other hand, had the cartoonist given us the identities of the drivers perhaps we may have different views of the world.

With thanks, and apologies for any possible infringements of copyright which may be found in this not-for-profit educational use of a small part of the material of the copyright holders, and in particular to Chappatte, Stuttmann, knowthenation, the Chinese Embassy authority and the BBC, without whose article this blog would never have been written.