Emergency’s children: satire in the hindi comics of Hawaldar Bahadur

ABSTRACT

This article explores an unusual connection between the poetics of ancient Sanskrit drama and Hindi comics. This interconnection highlights how satire was used in Hindi comics after India’s twenty-one-month Emergency was declared from 1975 to 1977. I argue that Hawaldar Bahadur comics negotiate with the ancient Vidushaka tradition of Sanskrit drama to overcome the angst of the post-Emergency world. In the first part of the article, I analyse the function of Vidushaka, a humorous character considered to be the personification of laughter, by first looking into its earliest example, the Sanskrit satire play, Bhagavadajjukiyam (The Ascetic and the Courtesan). I then study the modern rendering of the Vidushaka tradition through an analysis of Habib Tanvir’s 1975 production of Charandas Chor (Charandas the Thief). In the second part of the article, I demonstrate how Hawaldar Bahadur of Manoj comics deploys the idiom of Vidushaka to create a new model of resistance, which in turn critiques the mainstream discourse of resistance – that is, of the ‘angry young man’ popularised by Bahadur of Indrajal comics. Overall, I examine satire in Hindi comics to understand how humorous characters have contested the discourse of an autocratic nation-state.

KEYWORDS:

• Hindi comics
• vidushaka
• Sanskrit drama
• Hawaldar Bahadur
• satire

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. There are ten types of dramatic plays, according to Bharata’s Natyasastra, a book on Indian aesthetics. Two out of these ten are characterised as satires, bhana and prahasana (Bharata 1951, 355). For comprehensive commentary on the aesthetics of bhana, refer to ‘The Politics of Dark Ecologies in Deepan Sivaraman’ Peer Gynt’ (Prateek 2020).

2. Amar Chitra Katha (literally Immortal Comic Books) is a series of comic books started in 1967 by Anant Pai to educate Indians of their ancient past. It is published in all major Indian languages, such as, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, English.

3. Mr Sawan Gupta, son of Vinay Gupta, founder of Manoj Comics, enlightened me with the history of Manoj Comics during a telephonic conversation. One can also gather the essential facets of Manoj comics from manojpublications.com.

4. The character’s popularity can be fathomed from the fact that although Manoj Publications stopped publishing Manoj comics, fans kept the character alive through blogs. They either shared the scans of the old comics or published commentaries on these blogs, recreating a nostalgic world of the past. Recently, ComicsIndia has come forward to republish some of the chosen Manoj comics in collaboration with Manoj Publications. In early 2021, they published the first eight comics of the Hawaldar Bahadur series.

5. The Times Group stopped publishing Indrajal comics starring Bahadur in the 1990s. Abid Surti has started a website, Bahadurbela.com, to introduce the current generation to the world of two protagonists, Bahadur and Bela. The website explains that the process of digitising Bahadur comics has begun.

6. Bahadur comics are out of print now, but they are in circulation both as collectors’ editions and pirated e-copies on fan blogs and torrent websites.

7. According to the Natyasastra, the other three extinct types are: Lingi (Vidushaka associated with a celestial hero, such as God); Dvija or Brahmin (Vidushaka associated with a king); and Rajajivi (Vidushaka associated with a minister) (Bhat 1959, 90).

8. All translations from Sanskrit and Hindi to English, if unidentified, are mine.

9. According to Bhat, a classic example of Lingi (ascetic) Vidushaka is Narada (92). Innumerable TV series, based on the Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, and the annual ritual of Ramlila, folk theatre based on the life of Lord Rama, have made this kind of Vidushaka ubiquitous.

10. For a complete analysis on Tanvir’s theatre, please refer to ‘Reinterpreting Passion: A Study of Habib Tanvir’s Theatre’ (Prateek 2016).

11. Natyasastra identifies Bhagavadajjukiyam as an instance of shuddha-prahasana (pure-prahasana), roughly translated as religion-oriented, since it is devoted to the funny and witty banter of monks (Bharata 1951, 372).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prateek

Dr Prateek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India. He completed his PhD in theatre studies at the University of Queensland, Australia, with visiting fellowships at Humboldt University and Oxford. He wrote his MPhil at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He is a recipient of two Fulbrights: Fulbright fellow at Yale University (2010-11) and Fulbright Postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University (2021-22). His monograph, Brecht in India: The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre (2021), was published by Routledge, UK.