TINTIN AU CONGO

There's suddenly furore in the UK over Tintin in the Congo being racist. What's so new about it? It's an out-and-out racist work with blacks portrayed as imbeciles and the white man's burden (here the Belgian colonial regime). That's why the colour version came out in English only as late as 2005, that too to satisfy Tintinophiles.

Forget the racism bit, Tintin in the Congo is crap. The jokes are crude and not funny in the least. And there's enough for animal rights activists to holler. You'll see a heap of antelopes killed by Tintin and a rhinoceros dynamited to death among other things. In short, it's only of archival value for devoted Tintin fans.

Also it was one of Herge's early works, in fact his second, when he was still a greenhorn. And Herge was not free of the colonial perjudices of Imperial Belgium. A product of its times, emabarrassing now. Herge himself disowned the book, calling it a sin of youth.

It's a flawed product in every respect which should be ignored and forgotten. Instead there is hue and cry.

But keeping the book in the children's section is just not on. It's meant only for Tintinophiles and should be consigned somewhere in the adult graphic novel section.

When I was in school I read an article in The Week about a new book "Tintin in the New World" by Frederic Tuten. Tintin got married to somebody called Claudia and he has an increasingly fractious relationship with her. Lo and behold, when I went to a lending library in Thiruvananthapuram soon after, what do I find? The same book, lying with the other Tintins.

I wasn't daring enough to borrow it though I knew the content. I planned to pick it up in my next trip but I did not find the book. And never again did I find that book in the library. Some agitated parent's doing I am sure.

The point I am trying to make is, instead of raking up the issue, just remove Tintin in the Congo from where it is not supposed to be - the children's section. Let's not judge a book written in 1930 by today's standards. Just ignore it.