Narrative, Public Cultures and Visuality in Indian Comic Strips and Graphic Novels in English, Hindi, Bangla and Malayalam from 1947 to the Present
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UGC MRP - COMICS BOOKS & GRAPHIC NOVELS Narrative, Public Cultures and Visuality in Indian Comic Strips and Graphic Novels in English, Hindi, Bangla and Malayalam from 1947 to the Present UGC MAJOR RESEARCH PROJECT F.NO. 5-131/2014 (HRP) DT.15.08.2015 Principal Investigator: Aneeta Rajendran, Gargi College, University of Delhi UGC MRP INDIAN COMIC BOOKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS Acknowledgements This work was made possible due to funding from the UGC in the form of a Major Research Project grant. The Principal Investigator would like to acknowledge the contribution of the Project Fellow, Ms. Shreya Sangai, in drafting this report as well as for her hard work on the Project through its tenure. Opportunities for academic discussion made available by colleagues through formal and informal means have been invaluable both within the college, and in the larger space of the University as well as in the form of conferences, symposia and seminars that have invited, heard and published parts of this work. Warmest gratitude is due to the Principal, and to colleagues in both the teaching and non-teaching staff at Gargi College, for their support throughout the tenure of the project: without their continued help, this work could not have materialized. Finally, much gratitude to Mithuraaj for his sustained support, and to all friends and family members who stepped in to help in so many ways. 1 UGC MRP INDIAN COMIC BOOKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS Project Report Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 1. Scope and Objectives 3 2. Summary of Findings 3 2. Outcomes and Objectives Attained 4 3. Achievements from the Project 5 5. Contribution to the Society 7 DETAILED REPORT OF RESEARCH 8 INTRODUCTION: SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES 8 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 13 A BRIEF REVIEW OF RESEARCH ON THE SUBJECT 18 FINDINGS 27 SECTION I: SUPERHERO COMICS AND HETEROPATRIARCHIES 38 SECTION II: THEORIZING SPACE AND BELONGING 54 ANIMALITY AND PERSONHOOD 60 DYSTOPIA IN ORDINARY PLACES 64 LOCATING WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORIES 66 SECTION III: DEPICTING CASTE 77 SECTION IV: REINVENTING MYTHOLOGY IN GRAPHIC NARRATIVES 92 EPIC INTERPRETATIONS: DRAWING THE MAHABHARATA FOR OUR TIMES 105 SECTION V: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY AND DIGITAL COMICS 122 CREATING NEW MYTHS TO RESOLVE OLD PROBLEMS 126 Select Bibliography 135 Appendix: Interview with Amruta Patil 156 2 UGC MRP INDIAN COMIC BOOKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Scope and Objectives The primary objective of the project was to review and to theorize the corpus of comic books and graphic novels available to Indian audiences primarily in English and by extension in three connected Indian languages, namely Hindi, Bangla and Malayalam. We have sought to examine what ―public cultures‖ emerge through the medium of the Indian graphic narrative and the comic book. Visuality is often under-explored in many forms of literary scholarship and this project has sought to correct the overprivileging of textual art. What are the subject areas of importance and how are they mediated and created through the form of the graphic narrative, what practices of visuality and textuality accompany them and how they function to create meaning is explored across mass-market print as well as digital format comics. This project aimed at interdisciplinary study of how the comic strip intersects with narratives of nation, transnationality, cosmopolitanism, modernity, tradition and individual self-fashioning. Secondary objectives included enhancing the extent of academic engagement with the field through creation of opportunities for formal study of the medium. 2. Summary of Findings Our major finding is that intersectional understandings of Indian comic book and graphic narrative texts are necessary to examine the complex connections between various markers of identity such as gender, caste, regionality or religion, class, ability and personhood. The project analyses a variety of contemporary productions using an intersectional framework so that a nuanced reading of contexts emerges. Digital and visual cultures in contemporary South Asia are no longer local, they are instead very transnational and cosmopolitan, ranging over spatial as well as temporal formations. One example of texts with such a large footprint is the digital comic Priya‘s Shakti, which is today regarded by the UN as a vehicle for women‘s empowerment and social transformation in South Asia. This project has analysed the meanings of feminism/feminist work and social transformation presented through and of such globally circulated texts and found that mythological and fantastic tropes can be interwoven and overlay one another to produce a new lexicon of the superheroine who is quintessentially ―Indian‖ but whose Indian- 3 UGC MRP INDIAN COMIC BOOKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS ness is limited and contained by variables drawn from only one religion and through selectively highlighting only some parts of Indian women‘s struggles for equality and freedom from gender-based discrimination. Thus, digital texts that present themselves as universal can pose special challenges when decontextualized and consumed free of substantive referential pedagogical frameworks. At the same time, the digital cultures of the Internet are also not favourable for literary audiences in India that lack the literacy necessary to navigate the Internet successfully, and thus, one key finding of our work is that the graphic novel medium is not as democratic as its use of images may initially suggest. Next, mythological texts are a staple in the Indian comic book market, with a continuous flow of new interpretations and renditions. Our analysis shows that on the one hand many of these representations focus only on some aspects of the narratives they study (such as war in the Mahabharata) thus glamorizing and commoditizing that theme, and further reinforcing normative and hegemonic value systems (such as those of masculinity in this particular example), whereas interpretations that are born of deeper study and scholarly engagement can help break ideological barriers or polarities and contribute to an understanding of what ―culture‖ and ―heritage‖ come to mean. Religiosity is a terrain of contest today in India, with "liberal" and "religious" (conservative) mindsets seeking to fix ways of seeing religion against a polarized political context. Through the work of Indian graphic novel and comic book authors and artists, this project has been able to explore the contemporary processes whereby religion is updating itself even as it stabilizes its meanings in the present. Engaging via their art with what presents as progressive/regressive, eco-feminist, spiritual, in their rendition of "religious" lives, identities, or stories, the project has explored the contours of what it means to be authentically "Indian" in current contexts. The experience of citizenship further has been mediated differently depending on how characters identify and are perceived in terms of their gender, sexuality, caste, bodily ability or disability, and we find that making visible these risks and secondary citizenships through the graphic narrative serves a pedagogical function, especially when these texts are discussed in classroom contexts, in making visible these differences in a fashion different from the word-text or the cinematic text. 2. Outcomes and Objectives Attained The project has been able to comprehensively survey the field and outline several areas wherein research can be conducted, and meaningful outcomes derived. Key subject areas that 4 UGC MRP INDIAN COMIC BOOKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS emerged through the project‘s examination of a wide corpus of comic books and graphic novels include issues regarding the representation of gender, caste and mythological subjects, as well as the nature of personhood. Over the duration of the project, the importance of examining digital cultures was felt as many artists started to work on comics that were often never published in conventional print, and thus this objective was additionally pursued. The objective of ensuring dissemination of knowledge on the field has been met by introduction of an undergraduate course on comic books and graphic novels at the University of Delhi through a syllabus-formation committee headed by the Principal Investigator. Elective papers for first and second year undergraduates have been taught at Delhi University now for nearly four semesters and this is a major achievement for the project, going beyond its initial goal of creating a network for studying comics and graphic narratives. Further, the Principal Investigator and Project Fellow also participated in a wide variety of academic seminars and conferences to disseminate their work emerging from this project. One difficulty experienced is that of the lack of available good quality translations of comic books published in Indian languages. Another has been the availability of published comic books in the market; editions often disappear with little archival trace remaining and this will be an impediment for future scholars too. 3. Achievements from the Project Principal Investigator, Papers at Conferences/Seminars: 1. Invited speaker on ―Literatures of 21st Century: Fan Fiction, Graphic Novels and Memes,‖ at Traversing Texts: Literature and Arts of our Times, the Ramjas College Annual Seminar 2020-21, 12.03.2021. Delhi 2. Invited to present the paper ―Reading the intersecting ecologies of gender and caste in select graphic novels and films‖ at ―Literati: The Literary Exploration,‖ Summer Cycle of lectures, organized by Maharaja's College Ernakulam and