The perfect victim: Reading trauma and victimhood in rape narratives in Indian comics

Abstract

This article is a feminist enquiry into the image of the grieving victim of sexual assault in the nation state of India; it is also a critical analysis of what it means to depict trauma, graphically, in this political climate where the rhetoric of women’s empowerment is constantly being strategically adapted within the Saffron camps of extremist Hindu forces. This article deals with the ideal victim of trauma in three Indian comics on rape and sexual assault through the lens of feminist discourses around justice, victimhood and feminist art history. The glorified, ideal victimhood is often placed within a narrative of Hindu iconography, which ironically, sometimes, manifests through a religio-political rhetoric of women’s empowerment. I read the image of this ‘ideal’ victimhood with reference to the comics series Priya’s Shakti, Pratheek Thomas’s graphic narrative Hush (2011) and my own comic Naming and Shaming (2018). I posit the reading of my own comics on the #MeToo movement and discuss my immense urge and severe unease while putting forth a visual representation of victimhood – and seeking that very act, as a point of departure – and a way of challenging the idea of an ideal victim.