Follow the River of Stories: Comics, Folk Culture, and Social Justice in Delhi
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FOLLOW THE RIVER OF STORIES: COMICS, FOLK CULTURE, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN DELHI Jeremy Stoll Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology, Indiana University December 2012 UMI Number: 3552640 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 3552640 Published by ProQuest LLC (2013). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346 ii Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _____________________________________________ Pravina Shukla, Ph.D. _____________________________________________ Henry Glassie _____________________________________________ Michael Dylan Foster _____________________________________________ Susan Seizer May 23rd, 2012 iii Copyright © 2012 Jeremy Stoll iv Acknowledgements Although my fieldwork only lasted four months, I feel responsible to the people that I met in Delhi in that time, and to the creators within India’s comics culture. While in the field, many of these artists brought me into their homes and studio spaces, into their creative process and into their own understanding of the world. I would like to single out Orijit Sen, who warmly welcomed me into his studio and into Delhi’s comics community; Tapas Guha, who bravely brought me into his home and studio to witness his creativity in practice; Vishwajyoti Ghosh, who offered tea and insightful conversation at his dining room table; Parismita Singh, who questioned my questions and helped me stay critical; Amitabh Kumar, who made me feel less a researcher and more a friend; Vidyun Sabhaney, who offered her friendship, enthusiasm, and creative insight side by side; and Sarnath Banerjee, whose friendship and regular walks I miss to this day. Through thoughts and words, they generously helped me to understand India’s visual and comics culture through their eyes. As a scholar, it’s my job not just to contextualize their work and engage readers in a process of growing their own understanding of these stories, but also to live up to their kindness. In some ways, I can never live up to that generosity. This work is the beginning of that process of living up to the gifts of kindness and knowledge that they gave to me. This is also the beginning of my living up the scholars and teachers who helped me along the way. I am particularly grateful to Professors Henry Glassie, Pravina Shukla, and Michael Dylan Foster, who each, in their own way, were essential in my getting to Delhi and processing my experiences into something written. I am especially grateful to Pravina for working closely with me as I have gone through the many steps of getting a doctoral degree in Folklore; her incisive feedback and unfailing support have been a necessity. I am also grateful to Henry for having faith in my comics research and always helping me sort through my thoughts so clearly, even when I did not want to, and to Michael, for his comprehensive feedback and support. Last, I am grateful for the v support of my minor advisor, Susan Seizer, who has helped me to stay enthusiastic about my research while continuing to ground my work in Communication and Culture. When I look back on my doctoral coursework and research, I am happy to remember the many supportive comments, warm conversations, and hugs. Thank you so much for helping me along the way. I must also acknowledge the help of my friends and family, first and foremost those three who have read multiple versions of this work: David Lewis, Jennifer Heusel, and Valerie Wieskamp. Thank you for all of your feedback, help, and support in repeatedly revising and restructuring this work. I owe you each a chocolate babka and much, much more. Michelle Melhouse was always helpful, and I cannot express my thanks for having such a wonderful friend and Graduate Recorder. Thank you to every one of my friends who helped me through the steps of creating this, especially Brenna Cyr for being adventurous, Steve Stanzak for listening, Ozan Y. Say for commiserating, Sarah Dees for clarifying, Tim Dolan for helping me print out that first, rough copy, and Stephanie Fida for always being awesome. Much gratitude goes to the friends that I made in the process of going to Delhi, too, particularly Sanjay and Rina, who provided a home, Vidyun Sabhaney who fixed my camera and took me to a Tegan and Sara concert on Thanksgiving, and above all Puja Batra- Wells and Shweta Wahi who made it even feasible for me to be in Delhi in the first place. And thank you to my family, as well: Sara for helping me sort my thoughts, Mary Lyn for helping me be calm, and my brother Tim. In particular, I am grateful to my mom, for her continued support in everything I do, and to my dad, for helping me through a rough time when his time was rougher, and for always being so clear-headed in his heart. I could never have made this without each of you in my life. I also want to thank the many institutions that supported me throughout my academic career and research. I am unendingly grateful for the financial and overall support I received from the India Studies Program at Indiana University, in the form of a Dissertation Travel Grant funded by the vi TATA Group, contacts with the American Institute for Indian Studies in New Delhi, and general support while in the field. In addition, my research would not have been possible without the training I received in Hindi during the summer of 2009 at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s South Asian Language Institute (SASLI), as funded by a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship through the Center for the Study of Global Change at Indiana University. Upon returning to the United States, I received a fellowship through the Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon in 2011 that supported my doctoral work and enabled further research at the Library of Congress. I would like to thank Martha Kennedy especially, as she guided me through the Library’s holdings and helped me to discover many examples of comics and cartooning in India that I otherwise may not have encountered. Finally, in the spring of 2012, I was chosen to present at the Modern South Asia Workshop at Yale University, among a group of incredibly talented and insightful young scholars. For that experience, from which I gained a great deal of helpful feedback and a greater understanding of Asian Studies as a field, I am incredibly grateful to the South Asian Studies Council and the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. Last, I want to dedicate this in part to my friend Kara Bayless, who passed suddenly during the fall of 2010 when I was staying in Delhi. She should have gotten to live much longer, and we should have taken the Tran-Siberian Rail together, but I am infinitely grateful for the time that we had as friends. In the end, though, this manuscript is dedicated to the many artists, authors, and editors with whom I worked, who were always gracious, often brilliant, and more patient than I could ever ask anyone to be with someone asking questions like ‘what is comics?’ Although not every voice is present here, in this work, each one was essential to helping me gain an understanding of the current comics scene in New Delhi and in India, more broadly. I came away with a great deal of good vii memories, the beginnings of friendships, and memories of some of the best chats, especially about comics, that I will ever have. You each showed me more kindness than anyone has a right to, and I hope that the words that follow will help me start to pay back in kind. viii Preface This dissertation is dedicated to celebrating the creativity of a group of artists named the Pao Collective and to their ability to craft meaning and community through the visual-narrative medium of comics. They are centered in the mega city of Delhi, though their work takes some members throughout India and others to cities in Europe and around the world. Their ranks include a wide array of people, with different experiences, storytelling styles, and skills, but five make up their core. They include: Orijit Sen, the creator of India’s first graphic novel and a foundation for this creative community; Sarnath Banerjee, a conversational master of storytelling who found a space for comics in book publishing; Amitabh Kumar, a media researcher and mural artist who sowed the first seeds of Pao; Parismita Singh, a visual storyteller and education researcher who has expanded the possible audiences for comics, and Vishwajyoti Ghosh, a political cartoonist and international comics creator dedicated to more socially invested stories. As a scholar and author, I am committed to investigating the practices of everyday life, with a focus on visual storytelling and community. As a comics creator, though, I am further interested in how people are able to build and sustain community through the creation of visual narratives, especially comics.