Why are all comics about strife, war and deprivation always in black and white?” a friend asked, as we stood reading graphic novels off the shelf at Landmark. Devouring graphic novels in stores was a favourite pastime of ours back when many bookshops existed. I started to respond with logic, but deduced from his curled lips that the question was rhetorical. “Look at these stories. So grim; the drawing, so static and heavy. I think depicting these issues in monochrome is misrepresentation. They are, in fact, intensely colourful stories — bright, gaudy, bizarrely humorous in all the uncomfortable places.”
I recall this when I call Sumit Kumar, a computer engineer turned graphic artist, to congratulate him on the release of his second graphic novel, Amar Bari, Tomar Bari, Naxalbari . I had been following the book Amar Bari… since it was released as a three-part web series on News Laundry . His panels are loud, boisterous and colourful, often peppered with meta references to Hindi pop culture. I mention this and he says it’s a conscious choice. “European graphic novels were a great introduction to Comics Journalism as a format but their black-and-white, stark representation is so forbidding. My idea of comics is different. While working on the Naxal issue, I felt, as a journalist, I was largely documenting political stupidity. My style emerges from that.”
His narrative is a Post-Modernist’s delight — the story told through a conversation at an animal farm (think Orwell) on the outskirts of Naxalbari. The animals, who can’t see what’s happening, turn to their friend, the owl, who can fly around and follow the revolt. It goes back and forth both in time and space, from the 60s to the present day, and from the dense Dandakaranya to the Kafkaesque corridors of power in South Block. One is naturally curious about the kind of research this entails. “When it comes to comics journalism, I am an armchair journalist,” Kumar laughs. “My research is largely second-hand. Books, articles, research papers and lots of conversations with interesting people. Since the topics I cover are fairly well-documented, all the material is available to anyone looking for it. While someone like Joe Sacco would go and live in a place to create a ‘feel’ for that place through their work, I concentrate on getting facts across in the most unbiased manner possible by collating varying views on the issue.”
The demographic Kumar targets is the young, upwardly mobile, Internet using crowd — people who are concerned with the modern history of issues that are still a major source of mainstream news in the country.
The story also begins with Orijit Sen’s River of Stories in 1994, the first Indian graphic novel. Written with the help of a small grant from an NGO, it explored the issues surrounding the controversial Narmada Dam. It was much acclaimed, but lack of awareness and a non-existent distribution channel meant that the book had only a limited reach (It is available on demand at Sen’s People’s Tree store in New Delhi). Written a few years after Art Spiegelman’s Maus and two years before Joe Sacco’s Palestine , it is one of the earliest comic journalism works in the world. To say it was ahead of its time is an understatement.
Subsequent years witnessed a lull, until the explosion of blogging in the early 2000s. A small comics movement began to grow in New Delhi under the mentorship of Sen. Several graphic artists including Sarnath Banerjee (founder of Phantomville) and Vishwajyoti Ghosh ( Delhi Calm ) emerged from this melting pot. In other cities too, a generation of comic artists who had grown up on Amar Chitra Katha , Tintin and Asterix were introduced to European and American graphic novels, leading to a significant Indian graphic novel movement.
As fiction brought them a degree of fame, they began to work on shorter comics journalism projects for forward-looking independent publications. The emergence of dedicated graphic publishers like Phantomville ensured that non-fiction storytelling would see light in print. Mainstream publishers began to join in and artists who had been blogging with a ‘marketable’ following got publishing deals.
Banerjee’s Enchanted Geography series that was published in the Sunday Magazine of The Hindu and Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s This Side That Side: Restorying Partition made news. Malik Sajad’s Maus -inspired Munna , about growing up in Kashmir, and Sacco’s Kushinagar , about the Dalits in northern Bihar are two significant books.
The list is short, not because little work is being done, but because one hears only about very few of them. With almost non-existent marketing budgets, the books are blink-and-miss. Shorter pieces for webzines are needles in a haystack. Word-of-mouth continues to be the main support.
But if this sounds like a largely urban history, it’s not. In 1994, when the country had not even begun to understand the Internet, Sharad Sharma, a visual journalist who had worked in print and electronic media, was growing disillusioned with mainstream journalism.
Like journalists elsewhere, he sensed that it was being increasingly driven by advertising and titillation. News, he felt, was moving farther and farther away from ground zero. He started World Comics India to explore what would come to be known as grassroots comics. “Grassroots comics view the journalist or activist as an expendable middle man, with an introductory role at best. Imagine a situation where the victim of a conflict turns into an on-field reporter,” says Kumar. Intrigued, I decide to call Sharma.
Sharma is gruff, precise and, understandably, seems to harbour a healthy suspicion about my ability to understand his field. But like all pioneers, he knows the field inside out and is a good speaker. Once I nudge him with a question, I only have to sit back and listen.
“World Comics India promotes work not by professional artists but by the very people who want agency to improve their own lives. Making such comics is relatively easy and can serve as an effective means of communication between ordinary people and state officials,” says Sharma. “Volunteers help people make comics from two A4 sheets. They then photocopy these and stick them up in public places.”
In the late 90s, Sharma raised funds by selling his scooter, air cooler and furniture. The beginnings were humble but the results, though not instantaneous, were extremely encouraging. By 2003, World Comics India was a registered organisation. By 2005, it had chapters in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Soon, it had spread to over 20 countries. The company began to publish downloadable Do It Yourself kits. Since 2005, its volunteers have run campaigns from Rajasthan to Mizoram and from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu on a variety of issues ranging from female foeticide to caste segregation in prisons. From a Class IX student who managed to get an abusive headmaster replaced in his village school to Suresh Jaipal’s success in getting electricity to his village, the efficacy of the medium is unquestionable.
This heady mix of mainstream and grassroots comics in the digital age bodes a bright future, I say, realising my mistake a second too late. “Bright future? Who uses the Internet and who are they talking to? And who are these comics journalists? Where are they?”
I make a feeble attempt at highlighting what everyone has done. He doesn’t skip a beat. “In a country of 1.2 billion people, is that anywhere close to significant?” He ends the conversation, convinced he has burst my bubble.
But I am made of sterner stuff. My fantasy takes over: India paving the way for a future of comics journalism, through a bottom-up policy that kills privilege. The mission: no less than to end the tyranny of the written word. And at its helm, a grumbling, disillusioned leader, sharp, sarcastic, and never satisfied. This is the stuff of a legendary comic book!
