Indian graphic narratives and the post-millennial moment: reflections on the last twenty years

ABSTRACT

The aim of this special issue is to take stock of graphic narrative creation in English, produced and distributed from within India over the last 20 years. With this focus, the Special Issue engages with theoretical as well as aesthetic considerations, thinking through what ‘the 21st century canon of Indian graphic narratives’ looks like, what its predominant themes and preoccupations have been to date, as well as the forms in which Indian graphic narratives in English have appeared post millennium.

KEYWORDS:

• Indian comics; Indian graphic narratives; post-millennial Indian visual cultures; Indian visual studies

The aim of this special issue is to take stock of graphic narrative creation in English, produced and distributed from within India over the last 20 years. With this focus, the Special Issue engages with theoretical as well as aesthetic considerations, thinking through what ‘the 21^st century canon of Indian graphic narratives’ looks like, what its predominant themes and preoccupations have been to date, as well as the forms in which Indian graphic narratives in English have appeared post-millennium.

In order to better appreciate the depth and breadth of this recent canon formation, the Special Issue is divided into two parts. The first part looks at the authors and artists who have made ‘a name’ in the Indian graphic narrative (in English) domestic market over the last two decades, creators such as Sarnath Banerjee, Amruta Patil, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Vikram Balagopal and Appupen, as examples. The second part of this Special Issue is made up of conversation, interview, reflective and review-orientated pieces that cover the various forms, distribution and collective graphic narrative ‘making’ that has taken place since the turn of the millennium in this field. This second part of the Special Issue foregrounds the rise of graphic narrative ‘collectives’ (such as The Pao Collective, KADAK and Longform) alongside independent story houses (such as Studio Kokaachi in South India) and explores how graphic narrative author-artists have negotiated the post-millennial years in terms of work, creativity, and a fast changing, domestic, publishing scene within India.

In the early years of the millennium in India, the domestic publishing scene was on the cusp of what went on to be a seismic shift within the industry (Dawson Varughese 2013). This scene saw not only multi-national publishing companies setting up new offices from Noida to Chennai, it also witnessed a rise in independent publishing houses, online self-publishing and blogging as well as a significant opening up of varied ‘read-er/-ing markets’ in English and otherwise (see Narayanan 2012). The long-established, postcolonial ideas of the ‘Indian novel in English’ gave way to Indian Chick Lit, a plethora of mythology-inspired fiction, crime/detective fiction campus novels and more, as well as the Indian graphic narrative, as both graphic novel(la) and graphic short story. These ‘new’ iterations of the post-millennial Indian ‘novel’ in English all forged their own relationship with the post-millennial publishing and marketing scenes within India. As I have written elsewhere (Dawson Varughese 2018), V.K. Karthika was instrumental in endorsing and thus giving real visibility to Indian graphic narratives through her decade-long tenure as chief editor at HarperCollins India (from 2006 to 2016). Her audacious decision to commit to an Indian graphic narratives list at HarperCollins India meant that by 2016, the Indian market boasted: Kari (2008); Delhi Calm (2010); The Harappa Files (2011); Adi Parva (2012); The Legends of Halahala (2013); Aspyrus (2014); Simian (2014); All Quiet in Vikaspuri (2016) and Sauptik (2016).

It is generally agreed that a precursor to the post-millennial Indian graphic narratives listed above is Orijit Sen’s River of Stories (1994) which was produced in partnership with Delhi-based environmental action group, Kalpavriksh (Dawson Varughese 2013, 138–139). The early noughties saw Penguin India publish Sarnath Banerjee, namely his 2004 graphic novella Corridor, and The Barn Owl’s Wonderous Capers followed in 2007. After V. K. left her editorship at HarperCollins India, Banerjee returned to Penguin to publish Doab Dil in 2019. And although, HarperCollins India published Longform Volume 1: an anthology of graphic narratives (2018), it is with Penguin India that Longform Volume 2 will be published (forthcoming 2021/2022). Penguin India of course, already has the experience of publishing the graphic narrative anthology Pao: the anthology of comics I in 2012 although this is now regrettably, hard to get hold of. Following Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s poignant publication, Delhi Calm (2010) with HarperCollins India, he went on to curate an anthology of short graphic stories for Yoda Press, entitled This Side, That Side (2013). Yoda Press also published a substantial first in the Indian domestic market; two volumes of graphic non-fiction from India First Hand Vol (2016) and First Hand Vol 2: Exclusion, 2018) and in 2021, Shaheen Bagh: a graphic recollection was released. This overview of post-millennial Indian graphic narrative production is not comprehensive, other publishing houses such as Navayana, Hachette and Westland have also contributed to the scene, often with specifically-themed texts and artwork. Zubaan has also contributed two volumes of transnational work (as an Indian-German collaboration), namely Drawing The Line: Indian women fight back (2015) and The Elephant in The Room: women draw their world (2017). Bengaluru-based Priya Kuriyan contributed the graphic story Ebony and Ivory in this latter collection, a beautifully written and drawn narrative about family, love and the Gulf lives of Keralite families.

Unfortunately, many of the early millennial graphic narratives published by global publishing houses mentioned above have not been reprinted after coming to the end of their (typically) conservative print run, and other scene-changing graphic narratives such as Kashmir Pending (Phantomville, 2007) have suffered the same fate. It is with this in mind and the acknowledgement that the last two decades have proven to be extraordinary for India in terms of social and cultural change that this Special Issue looks to consolidate and examine the last twenty years of Indian graphic narrative production in English through the research presented here. The future for Indian graphic narratives in English is of course shifting; with graphic narratives increasingly being created on tablets and phones, the aesthetic we have come to know as indicative of the post-millennial Indian graphic narrative scene is changing, or rather, evolving. The sentiment of an ‘inauspicious India’ still remains I suggest, when we consider Appupen’s ‘Brainded India’, the plethora of illustrators and graphic narrative artists on Instagram such as Mohith O; Ijaz Mohammed; Gitanjali Iyer; Noel Jyothis (as just some examples) and so even with the current feeling of stasis within the Indian graphic narrative scene in terms of printed works (from the large global publishing houses cited above), the digital world seems to promise a more dynamic and engaged scene as we enter the third decade of the post-millennial era.

EDV

The pieces in this issue are diverse in the manner in which they take stock of the last two decades of Indian Graphic narratives. The visual has always held a special place in Indian cultural life (and other arenas too) – be it calendar art’s depiction of myriad gods and goddesses or the visualisation of the nation itself as the Mother (and/or Goddess). The articles in this issue, as stated above, explore graphic novel(la)s, silent graphic narratives and abstract sequential art by independent, individual artists and also by publishing studios such as Studio Kokaachi and collectives such as KADAK. If one were to attempt to study the moorings of the articles in this Special Issue as they relate to the CFP, one would need to think about a possible study of the socio-political factors that led to the rise of comics and graphic novels in India, something that Debanjana Nayek’s paper entitled ‘Subverting the Dominant Structure Through Graphic Narratives: From the Dissenting Printed Comics to the Subcultural Noise of Webcomics’ does quite neatly. The paper proceeds to discuss the politically subversive nature of Indian webcomics, through the notion of ‘subculture’. Nayek traces the manner in which comics beginning with the ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ (and later ‘Indrajal’ and ‘Diamond Comics’) shaped the idea of India, through characters with which the populace could establish an identity.

The next, logical, thematic move would be to ‘categorise’ the oeuvre of such writings in India, which Singh’s paper entitled ‘Speaking/Showing Silence in Appupen’s Graphic Novels’ does through a discussion of Appupen’s ‘silent’, ‘mythical’ graphic novels. The paper analyses the manner in which his work problematises the perception of the ‘graphic narrative’ as one where word and image work in sequential collusion and instead uses ‘silence’ to propel his narrative – visually and also, textually. The piece by Pinaki De entitled ‘Post-millennial comics anthologies in India: The long haul to Longform’ functions as an umbrella-article, tracing the origins of the post – millennial Indian graphic narrative anthologies, the study of comics as a discipline in the Indian university system, comic festivals and workshops. It gives a detailed, wide-ranging overview of the field.

The impulse of Indian visual narratives towards glocalisation and cultural nationalism is analysed in Roma Chatterji and Amaan Shreyas’s article entitled ‘Seriality and Millennial Fandom in the Indian Superhero Comic Nagraj’. This article explores the interesting transformation of the very popular, printed Nagraj superhero comics into the online mini-series ‘Khajana’, through a study of the Indian superhero mythos and the rise of scientific rationality. The strength of the paper lies in its elaboration of serialisation and ‘fandom’, in the context of the Nagraj comics – fields that are novel to the Indian context – in fact, the ‘Khajana’ series is the first of its kind that circulates in online fora through serialisation.

Mythology-inspired visual fiction is dealt with in two papers in this Special Issue: the first, authored by Somasree Sarkar and Goutam Karmakar and entitled ‘Multi-modal Engagement with Aranya: Appropriating Ecological Awareness in Amruta Patil and Devdutt Pattanaik’s Graphic tale Aranyaka: Book of the Forest’ explores the space of the ‘aranya’ – a zone where the human and the non-human interact – through image-text narration which contextualises the relationship of the forest to the cosmos. This graphic novel draws upon Indian mythology and it is structured as a quest narrative where seekers are on an intellectual and material quest.

Secondly, Anuja Madan’s ‘“I Am Not an Animal”: Vikram Balagopal’s Psychologisation of Hanuman in Simian’ discusses how Balagopal humanises the Indian god Hanuman in a re-writing and re-visioning of the Ramayana, as the graphic narrative re-tells the story of the epic through Hanuman’s perspective. This exploration becomes especially interesting because of its comparison with the portrayal of Hanuman in other media such as anthropomorphic calendar art versions. Interestingly, Balagopal’s re-telling deploys the figure of the Gelada baboon (the creature that once actually flourished in India) to represent Hanuman – this makes the god neither mortal nor immortal – perhaps, one might argue, only secular.

Depiction of the everyday city-life, in all its sordidness and all its glory, is at the heart of several Indian graphic novels from the post-millennial period; they are as much part of the action and plot of these visual narratives as the other characters who populate the storyline. Rudrani Gangopadhyay’s paper entitled ‘“Paratext City as Text: New Strategies in Reading (and Mapping) in Sarnath Banerjee’s ‘The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers“’ expands upon Gerard Genette’s notion of the ‘paratext’, in the context of Banerjee’s graphic narrative, through a reading which looks at how the graphic narrative maps the city of Kolkata.

Regarding interviews and reviews, Dominic Davies’ interview entitled ‘Witnesses, Graphic Storytellers, Activists: An Interview with the KADAK Collective’ engages with a group of South Asian women who are active in visual storytelling across the globe. The interview discusses a range of issues from online and offline publishing, to the struggles they constantly face as the creators and publishers of graphic art. ‘From Kokaachi to the World: a review of Studio Kokaachi’s comics’ activity of the post-millennial years’ by Serene George is a piece that discusses the work of the Cochin (South India)-based storytelling and publication studio. George looks back over the story house’s catalogue, discussing themes, forms and distribution of the story house’s activity to date. Finally, ‘Discovering the Self: In conversation with Dyuti Mittal’ by Partha Bhattacharjee and Priyanka Tripathi sees Mittal in a dialogue about her very different, abstract visual storytelling practice, in her comics such as ‘Flaw’, ‘The Taboo’, and ‘Love Story’.

SW

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

E. Dawson Varughese

Dr E. Dawson Varughese is a Senior Fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities, India and an independent scholar in the UK. She has published extensively on post-millennial, 'New India', literary and visual cultures.

Varsha Singh

Dr Varsha Singh is an Assistant Professor in English Literature and Culture Studies, The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Jammu, J & K, India

Sakshi Wason

Sakshi Wason is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi, India.