In India’s Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings, and Other Heroes, Karline McLain argues that the Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) comic book series represents a form of public culture through which creators and readers participate in national and religious discourse. In the process, McLain demonstrates how folklore, when translated into a new medium like comics, may help people connect with their cultural heritage. This analysis of India’s first major comics publisher invigorates folklore and comic art by illustrating their essential role in creating and revising national and religious identity.
McLain provides the historical and cultural context for ACK, from the rise of the nationalist, Hindutva movement in India to the later development of an urban middle-class. The author then compares the reading of Indian comics with the spiritual experience of darsan in Hindu puja and other visual narratives, from god posters to the Ramyan TV series. In the process, she argues that the ACK series has tended toward a nationalist, Hindu bias, mainly through the influence of the founder of Amar Chitra Katha, Anant Pai. In the first chapter, McLain presents a useful break-down of the production process; she describes how Pai and others used references to folk, ancient, or famous works, as well as certification by public figures, to establish these comics as contemporary, Indian heritage. Further, she uses the example of the first ACK comic, Krishna, to show how Pai, other editors, creators, and fans have interpreted these narratives. In the following chapters, McLain details these interactions and debates, starting by focusing on the negotiation of the ideal Indian woman in ACK’s Shakuntala. The author argues that ACK comics express a discomfort with gender because they locate ideal womanhood in the past and characterize virtuous women as long-suffering, modest, and subservient Mother Indias. McLain further analyzes this anxiety when she explores the process of translating scripture into comics in the example of ACK’s Tales of Durga. Through narrative analysis, she demonstrates how a textual focus upon the male villain over the female heroine violates ACK’s own narrative rules and suggests an anxiety over the goddess.
McLain next focuses on the combination of history and mythology in ACK, particularly in the representation of various historical figures. The author argues that the subject of their first historical comic book, Shivaji, mediates multiple identities, while the ACK series legitimates a nationalist, Hindu interpretation of history. Shivaji casts this leader as an iconic deity in the mythology of the nation-state, but only by vilifying his Muslim enemies as foreign invaders who would proselytize native Indians by force. Based upon ACK’s illustration of various Mughal emperors, McLain argues that this binary portrayal of Muslim historical figures as either pluralist heroes or Puritan villains relies upon a colonial characterization of Mughal rule as despotism. She further points out that, in mythologizing history for urban, middle-class Hindus, these comics position Hinduism both as secularism and in opposition to Islam. McLain uses the figure of Mahatma Gandhi as a final example to reflect upon ACK’s characterization of Indian heroes as manly, patriotic, and revolutionary. The author examines how the disjuncture between image and text in Mahatma Gandhi criticizes Gandhi by causally linking his inaction to violence. McLain argues that this not only shows anxiety over Gandhi the modern, national hero, but also dissociates the reader from actual events in order to support ACK’s characterization of heroes and of the nation itself. In the conclusion, McLain claims that Amar Chitra Katha, as understood by generations of youth raised on these stories and by many in the Indian diaspora, represents a form of public culture where Indian and Hindu identity are created and revised. However, in drawing on visual and literary culture from the nationalist period, ACK has tended to limit their comics to modern, middle-class, upper-caste audiences. Still, McLain emphasizes ACK’s important role in establishing both a national canon of heroes and a definition of Hindu and Indian identity for millions.
As one of the first scholarly books on Indian comics, India’s Immortal Comic Books carefully details the origins, history, and influence of ACK, although stronger connections between the chapters would have helped to better illustrate how Indian history is mythologized through these texts. McLain also relies upon fairly narrow conceptions of the comics medium and of the superhero archetype in her analysis. While readers should not expect a deep engagement with international comics scholarship or analysis of superhero narratives more broadly, they will find an engaging account of creators’ motivations and their influence upon nationalist discourse. In addition, although McLain includes interviews with readers and creators, she fails to describe alternative interpretations, including local development or folk precedents for these stories and their visual manifestations. She instead focuses upon Anant Pai and his personal engagement with comics as a tool of religious education. She presents the value and innovation of ACK while revealing the negotiation of agendas involved in translating these stories for contemporary audiences and in making them relevant to contemporary vernacular religion.
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[Review length: 826 words • Review posted on April 6, 2010]