Abstract
The journey of graphic narratives in India began in 1967 with the publication of the first issue of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) comics, with protagonists based on the mythological tales. These comic books glorified Indian heritage, making every mythological and historical story of India amar or immortal and claimed to present a complete picture of the culture and essence of India. However, these comics reinforced gender prejudice and conventional gender roles of a society where women are only portrayed as demure beings in a patriarchal framework. Indian graphic narratives have come a long way from solely idealising Hindu/Vedic past to the contemporary digital comics where individual stories are shared. This article aims to look at the history of graphic narration in India from a feminist perspective. It will analyse the gradual change in the representation of women from the printed comic books of 1960s to contemporary printed graphic novels as well as webcomics. While Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) comics overtly sexualised and fantasised Vedic women, contemporary Indian graphic novels have made a space for the everyday woman and her struggles. This space expanded and when it branched out into the digital realm any woman could voice her own problems by using images and text. This article will attempt to understand how this change has occurred in the portrayal of women in Indian graphic narratives and how the ‘gaze’ has also undergone an evolution. It will look at the question of authorship, the different forms of media involved as well as the socio-cultural milieu that propelled the transformation in female characters over the years.
Highlights
In 1967 when a young Indian journalist was watching a children’s quiz show on television he observed that the participants could answer questions from diverse topics, like global politics, world wars and even from Greek mythology but he was dismayed to discover that these children were unable to answer who was the mother of Lord Ram, an extremely rudimentary question from the Sanskrit epic, Ramayana
In order to analyse the gradual change in the representation of women in the world of Indian graphic narratives, it is imperative to take into account the women protagonists of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK)
From crudely objectifying female bodies to encouraging women to speak up, Indian graphic narratives have come a long way since their beginnings
Summary
In 1967 when a young Indian journalist was watching a children’s quiz show on television he observed that the participants could answer questions from diverse topics, like global politics, world wars and even from Greek mythology but he was dismayed to discover that these children were unable to answer who was the mother of Lord Ram, an extremely rudimentary question from the Sanskrit epic, Ramayana. The journalist realised that Indians were not well-acquainted with their own epics and did not feel interested in knowing about the mythology and the folk tales of the nation He understood that even twenty years after independence, Indians were reading only the stories of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, Tintin, Richie Rich and Enid Blyton. This article aims to study and briefly analyse the history of graphic narration in India from a feminist perspective It will look at the eventual transformation in the representation of women from the printed comic books of 1960s to the contemporary printed graphic novels as well as the webcomics of the digital era. I will use the ‘gaze’ theories of Michael Foucault, Hannah Arendt (Allen, 2002; Dolan, 2005) and Laura Mulvey as well as the feminist theories of Showalter, Haraway and Cocca to understand how the female characters have traversed from a marginal space in the graphic stories to the centre of focus, from a generalised view of the ‘good’ woman with an ‘ideal’ female body to a more individualistic depiction of the modern woman
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