Fact-Check: Altered Cartoon Targeting Congress, Gandhi Family Goes Viral
This cartoon is edited and the original cartoon was made by Indian cartoonist, Amal Medhi.
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A cartoon targeting Congress party is going viral on social media amid the ongoing Lok Sabha elections 2024.
More about the cartoon: It depicts a cow consuming a leaf which is shaped like India's map while defecating into a bucket to symbolise that is what Indian citizens are getting from Congress while the cow's milk is being collected and distributed to the Gandhi family.
The cartoon was credited to American artist Ben Garrison.
(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)
What's the truth?: This cartoon is edited and the original cartoon was made by Indian cartoonist, Amal Medhi, in 2015.
The original version poked fun at 'Make in India', an initiative by the Government of India, and alleged that only "foreign investors" benefited from Indian resources.
It did not mention anything about the Gandhi family.
How did we find out the truth?: Firstly, as mentioned in the claim, we checked Garrison's website and social media handles to find this cartoon.
However, we were unable to. In fact, we found a clarification from the artist which dated back to 2017.
In the post, he stated that he has never made any cartoons on Indian politics.
Upon doing a reverse image search on the viral image, we came across several old claims from 2021.
One of the comments under this post stated that this is not Garrison's cartoon but created by Amal Medhi.
He also mentioned that this cartoon is doctored and shared the original one from Medhi's Facebook.
This post is from 2017.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
We noticed Medhi's signature on the original cartoon and also noticed the changes made including addition of Congress' symbol and 'Gandhi family' tag on the bucket.
Comparison between the edited and the original cartoon.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
Taking a cue, we looked for Medhi's profile on Facebook and found out that on 28 March 2024, he had put up a post comparing the edited version to his original version.
In the caption, he states that this has been going around on the internet since the past nine years.
We have reached out to Medhi for more information about this, and the story will be updated when we receive a reply.
Conclusion: An edited cartoon targeting the Congress party is going viral amid the general elections 2024.
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