Book Review

Embedded Ideologies

Growing up in 1970s had some qualities of magical realism. With no television channels, mobile phones and internet around, the children of those days in India spent most of their time in playing rustic games or imagining so many things that existed outside the realm of reality. And their imaginations were nourished by occasional strip cartoons and a few children’s magazines. Amar Chitra Katha series was one of the sources of entertainment that children in India waited eagerly to read. It provided them with illustrated stories from myths, epics, folktales and nationalist narratives. When they read it, they read it with some kind of innocence and they did not realize that these carefully crafted pictorial narratives were indoctrinating them with a kind of ‘Hindu’ oriented, male chauvinistic ideologies. Amar Chitra Katha series could mould the mental make up of the then kids (now in their late thirties and early forties) considerably.

‘The Classic Popular Amar Chitra Katha- 1967-2007’ is an interesting research and case study by the Delhi based author Nandini Chandra. The basic research work of this book started off as an MPhil thesis and then Chandra continued her researches on the making of Amar Chitra Katha for twelve years. Currently teaching at the English Department of the Hansraj College, New Delhi, Nandini Chandra, in her book, has taken a definite stance, which supports the idea of democracy and secularism. Seen from this premise, Amar Chitra Katha series reveals a new arena of ideological processes, which hitherto we considered as quite innocent. According to Chandra, Amar Chitra Katha Series was started with a ‘purpose’ and in the process, it created a nationalistic narrative along with the production of a definable ‘other’.

Amar Chitra Katha is the brain child of Anant Pai, a man of Vaishnavite brahminical origins. He did not get the kind of English education that he wanted to have. Hence, when he was working with the Times of India Group and was producing the translated versions of the foreign comic strips like Phantom, Mandrake and so on, he arrived at this conclusion that instead of feeding the Indian kids with foreign nationalism, the vulnerable national kids should be taught the kind of Indian nationalism, which had been embedded in the popular stories in the country. Anant Pai also realized that the stories which did not have a definitive nationalist, right wing, male chauvinist bent, also could have re-narrated to produce desired narratives. Amar Chitra Katha became a huge hit in a country that was looking for real heroism. Anant Pai adopted various advertising and reaching out techniques so that Amar Chitra Katha Series could be seen as the narratives endorsed by the state, though there was an intrinsic critique on the state policy (then the congress led state policy) in these stories.

Nandini Chandra locates how ideologies are shaped up, strategized and narrated to achieve the desired goals. Though the artists were selected from different regions in India, to give a kind of authenticity to the mode of pictorial narration, Anant Pai was very strict about keeping the kind of Bollywood aesthetics out of the Amar Chitra Katha ensemble. On the contrary, he pitched his ideas in the Raja Ravi Varma tradition and the Hollywood action mode. He made his artists to yield to the pressures of ideology. Hence we see a Rama in the mould of a Hollywood hunk and Krishna a fair guy. The liberties taken on the traditional narratives were so immense that it could erase the traditional intentions considerably and etch the young minds with new ways of thinking, argues Nandini Chandra.

The author, by minutely analyzing the facial features, physiognomic details of the characters and perspectives of narration, says that the identity of the ‘other’ is fixed on Muslims, Dravidians and Shivaites. People in these categories are always portrayed as horrible creatures indulging in vandalism, blasphemy, loot and rape. They are painted in darker tones with Dravidian features. Women are always treated as Devis or Vamps; in both the cases, they are subjected to the decisions of men. Self immolating of women in Sati are hailed as an adorable virtue in these stories. The heroic women also finally succumb to the male pressures.

This book is an interesting study on the modern cultural formation in India. Also the author sheds lights on how the ideological centers sub-divide the labor of production into caste, creed and regional specificities. A worth reading and worth keeping book.

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