Batsyayana

Durga Baral (born 1943), professionally known as Batsyayana is a prominent Nepali political cartoonist and painter.

Biography Baral is a native of Pokhara, Nepal. Baral was a college teacher and painter when he began drawing cartoons in the 1960s when he was asked to by the publisher of Naya Sandesh. He later said "I took the job of a cartoonist not out of interest, but much like a profession, and simply as a job. I had no idea or knowledge about cartoons. The editor explained to me what and how I was supposed to make cartoons. I made whatever he told me to do and I did it for four years."

One of his most notorious cartoons was published in 2005 and featured Koirala, then an opposition leader, carrying a dead horse labeled "constitutional monarchy" away from a garbage bin. (One commentator later noted this invoked the story of a grief-stricken Shiva carrying the corpse of his consort Sati. ) The implication that King Gyanendra had "consigned the constitutional monarchy to the garbage bin" prompted outrage. The next day, Kantipur published a statement that concluded "This newspaper affirms its commitment to the constitutional monarchy and democracy." Critics even called for the execution of Baral.

Baral's son Ajit Baral compiled and published a collection of his father's cartoons called Batsyayana and His Barbs: A Cartoonist's Take on Post-1990 Nepal (2006).