Satish Acharya: the Indian cartoonist

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Who is Satish Acharya?

Satish Acharya (Kannada: ಸತೀಶ್ ಆಚಾರ್ಯ) is an Indian cartoonist from Kundapura. This is a place in Karnataka. In 2015, Acharya got featured on “United Sketches” as a professional cartoonist from India. Acharya was also included in the list of “24 Intellectuals”. This was by Forbes India, in 2015.

Early life and education of Satish Acharya

Acharya is a self-taught cartoonist without any formal training in art. As a student, he earned pocket money by contributing cartoons to Kannada publications like Taranga, Sudha, and Tushara. At first, he studied BCom from Bhandarkar’s College in Kundapura. Then he studied MBA in finance from Mangalore University.

Satish Acharya’s career

After completing MBA from Mangalore University, cartoonist Satish Acharya moved to Mumbai. There, he started in an advertising agency as an account executive. Despite doing quite well in his job, he quit it to pursue cartooning. He got his first break as a political cartoonist with Mumbai-based English tabloid Midday. He started working with Midday as a staff cartoonist in 2003. In that tabloid, he contributed to the daily cartoon column for nine years. He also draws cartoons for Gulf News.

Acharya drew a cartoon that showed Modi, the Prime Minister of India under China’s grip. Mail Today rejected that cartoon of Acharya and dropped the cartoonist. Satish Acharya claimed or rather professed censorship by Mail Today. However, the editor of Mail Today, Dwaipayan Bose rejected Acharya’s claim as baseless.

Acharya is one of the most powerful cartoonists in India. Acharya drew a cartoon on the Charlie Hebdo Massacre. It was regarded as one of the most powerful cartoons on the tragedy. Even the foreign media acknowledged this fact. Because of this reason, the cartoon was published in newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and also The Guardian.

Books that are written by Satish Acharya

Acharya has released five cartoon books. The first of them are Mein, Hum, and AAP in English. The second is Cartoonishta in Kannada and the third is Negipuggi in Kundapra Kannada. His fourth book was a cricket-cartoon book. The name of it was Non-Striker. It was officially released on 31 January 2015 in Bengaluru.

His latest cartoon book, Go Corona Go was released in 2021 and became one of the first cartoon books with the pandemic as a theme.

2 of his latest cartoons

The first one of Acharya‘s cartoons was seen just 22 hours ago on Twitter. It was about how Kangana Ranaut disrespected the freedom fighters of India. She said that in 1947, the British gave “bheek” to Gandhi in the form of freedom. Real freedom came when the Modi government came to power.

The second one was about Tulsi Godwa. She is a citizen of India who received the Padma Shri. Tulsi Gowda is an environmentalist from Karnataka.

She was awarded the prize for her outstanding contributions to tree conservation. She has planted over 30,000 saplings and has been interested in environmental conservation for over 60 years. Forest nurseries are like children to Tulsi Gowda, as indicated by the way she looks after the seedlings. The cartoon relating to this was posted on Twitter about two days ago.

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