“The cracks of post-liberalized India”: Storying the “New Society” through Banerjee’s The Harappa Files (2011)

Abstract

This article explores Sarnath Banerjee’s graphic novel The Harappa Files (2011) as a cultural and literary product of the post-millennial period in India, positing the Indian graphic novel as a new form of cultural and visual consumption. The article examines how Banerjee’s graphic novel looks to story the “new society” through the device of recollection and how, in doing so, it usurps traditional modes of representations of India by depicting India at certain points in a critical and unfavourable light. Overall, the article suggests that the Indian graphic novel is a site where old and new modes of visuality confer and where India is represented anew, often in challenging and inauspicious ways. The graphic novel lends itself to such contestation, since its literary form (often considered “marginal” both within and outside India) offers a creative space for challenging representations.

Keywords:

• Indian graphic novels
• Sarnath Banerjee
• post-millennial culture
• Indian fiction in English
• New India
• visuality

Acknowledgements

The Harappa Files by Sarnath Banerjee (2011), first published by HarperCollins Publishers India. All images © Sarnath Banerjee. Reproduced here with permission from HarperCollins Publishers India.

Notes

1. This appears in Hindi within the speech balloon. The translation is given by the author at the foot of the panel in which it appears.

2. See, for example, the recent campaign “Indian at Heart, Global in Spirit” at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport (2015–16), which has received significant (social) media attention.

3. bhadralok: a Bengali term for people of a well-educated and well-mannered social class.