Whose Immortal Picture Stories - Amar Chitra Katha and the Construction of Indian Identities

498 Pages·2005·15.37 MB·English

by  Karline Marie McLain

Copyright
by
Karline Marie McLain
2005
The Dissertation Committee for Karline Marie McLain certifies that this is the
approved version of the following dissertation:

Whose Immortal Picture Stories?: Amar Chitra Katha and the
Construction of Indian Identities

Committee:

Janice Leoshko, Co-Supervisor
Martha Ann Selby, Co-Supervisor
Kathryn Hansen
Syed Akbar Hyder
Patrick Olivelle
Cynthia Talbot
Whose Immortal Picture Stories?: Amar Chitra Katha and the
Construction of Indian Identities

by
Karline Marie McLain, B.A., M.A.

Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin
May, 2005
Acknowledgements
This dissertation has benefited from the generosity of many people and
institutions. First and foremost, I thank all of the comic book artists, authors, editors, and
fans who gave generously of their time and insight, without whom this project would not
have been possible. I am particularly grateful to Anant Pai for his hospitality and wealth
of stories and to Reena Puri for her friendship. I also thank Padmini Mirchandani,
Publishing Director at IBH in Mumbai, for granting permission to reprint images from
the ACK comics; Rekha and Shanta at the Mumbai Fulbright office, as well as the AIIS
officers in Delhi and Chicago, for their help with all of the necessary paperwork; and Dr.
Sunanda Pal in the Literature Department at S.N.D.T. Women’s University in Mumbai.
I am indebted to my advisors, Janice Leoshko and Martha Ann Selby, who had
faith in this project from the very beginning. I also thank the other members of my
dissertation committee for their critical guidance: Kathryn Hansen, Syed Akbar Hyder,
Patrick Olivelle, and Cynthia Talbot. Many other faculty members at UT were also
generous with their time and insight, especially Edeltraud Harzer, Gail Minault, Herman
van Olphen, and Kamala Visweswaran. I also thank: Philip Lutgendorf at the University
of Iowa, who loaned his Valmiki’s Ramayana comic book to me a decade ago, sparking
my interest in Indian comics; and fellow graduate students at UT and elsewhere for their
companionship and conversation.
iv
Finally, I thank my family: my dad, Gary, and moms, Laurie and Nancy, my
brother Justin, and my extended family for their moral support throughout my college
years, and their willingness to lug back suitcases full of comics after visiting me in India;
Ganges and the late Miss Molly for their pleasant company during the writing process,
especially during my bouts of insomnia; and, last but most of all, my husband Jonathan
for his unflagging support and unfaltering presence, his “crazy” sense of adventure, and
his love of Indian street food. I would not have dreamed so big without you.
I have received generous financial support, for which I am very grateful.
Fulbright-Hays DDRA funded my research in India from 2001-2, and writing support
was provided by a three-year grant from the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation from
2002-5. A shortened version of Chapter 4 was presented at the American Academy of
Religion conference in Atlanta in 2003; a segment of Chapter 1 was published as “Lifting
the Mountain: Debating the Place of Science and Faith in the Production of a Krishna
Comic Book,” Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 13.2 (Spring 2005).
v
Whose Immortal Picture Stories?: Amar Chitra Katha and the
Construction of Indian Identities

Publication No._____________

Karline Marie McLain, PhD
The University of Texas at Austin, 2005

Co-Supervisors: Janice Leoshko, Martha Ann Selby

Since it was first founded by Anant Pai in 1967, the Amar Chitra Katha comic
book series has dominated the flourishing comic book market in India, selling over 440
titles and more than 86 million issues. Amar Chitra Katha means “immortal picture
stories,” and as the name suggests, these comics feature India’s own immortal heroes – its
mythological gods and historical leaders – as their protagonists. The first comics in the
series were mythological in nature, recasting classical Sanskrit narratives of Hindu deities
like Krishna, Ram, and Hanuman in the comic book format. Over the years, the series
has expanded to include issues on a variety of other subjects: celebrated Hindu kings such
as Shivaji and Rana Pratap; medieval bhakti poets like Tulsidas; modern Hindu sages like
Swami Vivekananda; animal fables from the Pa§catantra; and colonial-era freedom
fighters including Subhas Chandra Bose and Lokamanya Tilak. Through content analysis
alone, it is easy to conclude that the Amar Chitra Katha comic book series conveys a
hegemonic conception of “Indianness” to its readers, one that entails the marginalization
of Muslims and other religious and cultural “outsiders” from the national past, the
vi
recasting of women in so-called “traditional” roles, and the privileging of middle-class
Hindu culture. Yet the question “Whose immortal picture stories?” – whose stories do
these comic books tell? – is not really this easy to answer. Hegemonic forms are always
in flux: dominant ideologies do not just exist passively, but are instead actively created
and recreated amidst ongoing debate. Comic books, as a form of public culture that
reaches into the everyday lives of millions of middle-class Indian children, are a crucial
site for ongoing debate about what it means to be Indian. In this study I examine not only
how such hegemonic discourses of religion, gender, and nation have been created over
time, but also the ways in which they are supported or contested in both the production
and consumption of this genre of popular visual culture.
vii
Table of Contents
List of Figures..........................................................................................................x
Introduction: Whose Immortal Picture Stories?......................................................1
Research Methods and Issues.......................................................................10
Layout of the Dissertation.............................................................................25
Chapter 1: Creating Immortal Picture Stories........................................................27
The ‘Father of Indian Comics’......................................................................27
Lifting the Mountain.....................................................................................29
Producing Amar Chitra Katha......................................................................42
Marketing Amar Chitra Katha......................................................................47
The ‘Route To Your Roots’..........................................................................63
Chapter 2: Sequencing Durga: Creating “Authentic” Tales in Amar Chitra Katha68
Mediating Authenticity.................................................................................69
Sequencing Durga.........................................................................................75
Visions of Durga...........................................................................................88
A Story For ‘All Thinking Indians’?............................................................96
Chapter 3: Resacralization and the Feminine Ideal in the Visual and Ideological
Culture of Amar Chitra Katha....................................................................105
Shakuntala: ‘Foremother of All Indians’....................................................107
Envisioning the Ideal Indian Woman.........................................................113
The Feminine Ideal in Amar Chitra Katha.................................................134
An Alternative Feminine Ideal in Amar Chitra Katha...............................145
Chapter 4: ‘Har Har Mahadev’: History, Mythology, and the Memory of Shivaji in
Amar Chitra Katha.....................................................................................153
Shivaji: ‘A Great Liberal’?.........................................................................154
Memory and Counter-Memory: Telling Shivaji Narratives.......................164
Memory and Counter-Memory: Showing Shivaji Narratives.....................174
Memory and Counter-Memory: Counter-Narratives of Shivaji.................182
viii
History and Mythology: The Coronation of Shivaji...................................192
Chapter 5: ‘Allah Ho Akbar’: Secularism, Conversion, and the Representation of
Muslims in Amar Chitra Katha..................................................................199
Shah Jahan and the ‘World’s Greatest Monument to True Love’..............201
Akbar the ‘Accommodating’ and Aurangzeb the ‘Puritan’........................216
The Discourses of Secularism and Conversion..........................................229
Seeming ‘Fair And Secular’........................................................................242
Chapter 6: Massacre and the Mahatma: Showing and Telling Gandhian Politics in
Amar Chitra Katha.....................................................................................245
Showing and Telling...................................................................................247
Mahatma Gandhi: A ‘Leader of the Nation’?.............................................256
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: A ‘Turning Point’...................................263
Who Shot the Mahatma?.............................................................................280
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Manufacturing Indianness..............................................296
Consuming Immortal Picture Stories..........................................................298
Manufacturing Indianness...........................................................................314
Appendix: Chronological List of Amar Chitra Katha Issues..............................403
Bibliography........................................................................................................451
Vita .....................................................................................................................479

ix
List of Figures
1.1: Krishna, Amar Chitra Katha, no. 501 (Bombay: India Book House Pvt. Ltd.,
1992 [1969]), cover. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher
India Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai...............................................324
1.2: Krishna, Amar Chitra Katha, no. 501 (Bombay: India Book House Pvt. Ltd.,
1992 [1969]), 21. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher India
Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai........................................................325
1.3: Krishna, Amar Chitra Katha, no. 501 (Bombay: India Book House Pvt. Ltd.,
1992 [1969]), 6. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher India
Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai........................................................326
1.4: Krishnadeva Raya, Amar Chitra Katha, no. 636 (Bombay: India Book House
Pvt. Ltd., 2001 [1978]), 25. Reproduced with the permission of the
publisher India Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai...............................327
1.5: Durgesh Nandini script, 1.............................................................................328
1.6: Durgesh Nandini, Amar Chitra Katha, no. 294 (Bombay: India Book House Pvt.
Ltd., 1983), 1. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher India
Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai........................................................329
1.7: Bhagawat: The Krishna Avatar, Amar Chitra Katha, not numbered (Bombay:
India Book House Pvt. Ltd., 2000), 72. Reproduced with the permission
of the publisher India Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai.....................330
2.1: Subhas Chandra Bose, Amar Chitra Katha, no. 544 (Bombay: India Book House
Pvt. Ltd., 2000 [1975]), 1. Reproduced with the permission of the
publisher India Book House Pvt Ltd, Mumbai...............................331
x