There are two kinds of post-colonials — the guilty and the giggling. In the apportioning of modern justice, the ex-colonizers get the guilt, and the ex-colonized often manage to wrest for themselves the right to find it all terribly funny. Political correctness is largely the creation of the former. It is a kind of ‘white noise’ that seldom escapes the misfortune of being always already a parody of itself. A British human-rights lawyer browsing in a bookshop came upon Hergé’s Tintin in the Congo and was horrified by its unabashed “white supremacist” content. He complained to the police and got the British Commission for Racial Equality to condemn the book for its “hideous racial prejudice”. As a result, the book has been shifted from the children’s to the adult graphic novels section in British bookshops: in a modern democracy, adult customers must be allowed to make their own choice.

This particular Tintin adventure — Hergé’s second, published in 1931 — has been virtually dropped from the official canon. While redrawing the album in 1946, Hergé (a Belgian) had removed several references to the fact that the Congo was at that time a Belgian colony. The book was subsequently republished in English only as a facsimile black-and-white edition, as if to date the racism into a collector’s item. The Scandinavians also objected to Tintin blowing up a rhino with dynamite. So Hergé had to redraw the episode with the rhino running away frightened after it accidentally fires Tintin’s gun. Finally, the 2005 colour English edition came with a foreword by the translators explaining the historical context of the original.

Human glee is essentially amoral. Hence a great deal of comedy is irresistibly wicked, while children — important relishers of the comic — are known to be creatures of unblinking cruelty, especially in what makes them laugh. So politically correct adults often find themselves fighting a losing battle trying to purge immortal children’s literature of unsavoury or embarrassing elements. Such right-minded battles are usually pioneered and fought by the white races, while the darker races blissfully go through childhood devouring Enid Blyton, Perrault and other forbidden fare, taking every prejudice in their stride and giggling along with every stereotype. It has been pointed out by one biographer of Hergé that Tintin in the Congo is a bestseller in Africa. Calcuttans should find nothing shocking about this. Hergé’s Coco and his “white mister” — who become chhotto Coco and the shada shaheb in the delightful Bengali translation — happily rub shoulders with Pheluda, Podipishi and the grislier creatures of Thakumar Jhuli in most bookshops.

Today’s White Mister seems to be telling Coco, “You mustn’t laugh at people laughing at you.” “Why not?” Coco answers back, “I think it’s very funny. And your asking me not to laugh at people laughing at me is terribly funny too!”