Political cartooning was one of many cultural products that colonial rule introduced to India. This British legacy has been used to produce narratives about the nature and history of Indian cartooning. However, these narratives have, invariably, overlooked the distinctly Indian cultural ethos as well as the Indian satirical tradition. This paper proposes an alternative model by positing that in the Indian satirical tradition, the Vidusaka – the comic figure in Sanskrit drama - has been an antecedent to the political cartoonist in terms of social and political roles, as well as in the nature and the purpose of the humour. The paper also locates the principles of caricaturing in precolonial Indian visual arts, and presents the early vernacular cartoons as the point of convergence between the local satirical tradition and the Western format of the political cartoon which laid the foundation for a modern yet specifically Indian sensibility.