To trace the origin of cartooning in Bengal, we must go back to the native scroll painters or Patuas in mid-19th century Calcutta. The ‘Pata Chitras’, whose staple theme included the divine and scenes from mundane life, had, by mid-19th century, started to embrace a contemporary idiom. For example, a spoof on a overfed Vaishnava mendicant, the fisticuffs among rustic womenfolk, in-laws tormenting a hapless young bride, roughing up of a pleasure-seeker by brothel inmates etc can be considered as a home-bred variant of what eventually came to be known as cartoons.
