Racist much? Australian daily's cartoon shows Indians eating solar panels!

Cartoon courtesy: The Australian

New Delhi: Published as a response to the Paris climate conference, a cartoon in the Australian newspaper has sparked controversy and has attracted criticism on social media owing to its racist content.

The said cartoon depicts an emaciated Indian family breaking up solar panels and one person trying to eat them with 'mango chutney'.

The cartoon appeared in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper on Monday, after the conclusion of the COP21 talks in Paris which agreed to limit global warming to less than 2 degree Celsius by the end of the century.

'''This cartoon is unequivocally racist and draws on very base stereotypes of third world, underdeveloped people who don't know what to do with technology," the report quoted Amanda Wise, an associate professor of sociology at Macquarie University, as saying.

“India is the technology centre of the world right now, and has some of the most high-tech industries on the planet in that part of the world,” Wise added. “The underlying message is that people in developing countries don’t need all these technologies to do with climate change - they need food,” she said.

The cartoon was widely condemned on Twitter, with many users drawing attention to India’s rapidly developing sustainable energy sector.