The News Minute | October 6, 2014 | 08:25 am IST
Perseverance ultimately pays off, at least this incident proved so. When The New York Times (NYT) recently published a racist cartoon showing India with a cow and knocking on the “Elite Space Club”, Indians, specially Malayalis, made sure that the publication got to see their wrath, or more like read it on Facebook.
So why does it bother Malayalis? Because a significant number of people working in ISRO hail from Kerala.
And thus the NYT received a steady influx of comments from Indians expressing their rage and displeasure at the cartoon, and hordes of comments demanding an apology.
We made an attempt to translate some of the comments from Malayalam to English for the NYT. Read: Dear New York Times: Do you even know what Malayali trolls are telling you on Facebook?
Scores of comments (including those in Malayali Malayalam and English Malayalam ) later, the NYT has now issued an apology on their Facebook page.
'A large number of readers have complained about a recent editorial cartoon in The International New York Times, about India's foray into space exploration. 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 apologize to readers who were offended by the choice of images in this cartoon. Mr. Heng was in no way trying to impugn India, its government or its citizens. We appreciate that readers have shared their feedback, which we welcome. — Andrew Rosenthal, Editorial Page Editor'