Learning culture via comics

The Amar Chitra KathaComics is an incontestable part of the Indian and Hindu childhood of anyone who grew up in or after the 1970s. This magazine started in India soon found its way to all corners of the Indian and Hindu Diaspora. This held true for Trinidad and Tobago as most growing up since that period learn Hindu stories in easily digestible Amar Chitra Kathacomics. Amar Chitra Kathacomics promote learning about the rich heritage of India through colourful, interesting stories presented in every one of these books. These comics are a great way to learn or teach about the Indian culture. Interesting while informative, Amar Chitra Katha comics are the perfect series for anyone wishing to learn about Hinduism and India. The series includes comics about India’s religion, leaders, fables and culture. New hard cover editions and bumper issues are now available in addition to the regular comics.

All regular titles (numbers 501-700) are paperback, laminated cover, 32 pages, in full colour, and 7” x 9.5” in size. Each hardbound titles (numbers 1001 - 1015) contains five full stories each from the list of regular Amar Chitra Katha comics. What better way to learn history than through the comic books? Every Amar Chitra Katha is historically accurate, lucidly written and superbly illustrated. Whether you are five years old or 50, after reading Amar Chitra Katha you will learn a great deal about India and its culture. Comic books can help scholars determine what cultural conditions existed when the books were published. Early 1960s culture is examined in light of a Fantastic Four issue. During that period, the US was so paranoid about regulating itself internally that it failed to see existing threats to its national security. The impact of the Amar Chitra Katha have not been fully examined as it influenced the Hindu and Indian Diaspora.

Examination of comics in a serious academic atmosphere is not new and should not deemed as uncommon. In a February 13, 1994, review of Understanding Comics in The New York Times Book Review, Garry Trudeau mentions an earlier book, What’s What, that created a lexicon of obscure terms with which a reader was supposed to approach a comic book. In current studies of comic books, or “sequential art” as many comics scholars now call comic books, there indeed exists a debate of which this is part. On one side a group of conservative critics wishes to ennoble comic books by creating a complex academic discourse that focuses on the relationship of the art in the comic to the text proper and how the two are in... (National Forum; 9/22/1994; Lippert, David) Now the  Amar Chitra Katha comic books have been elevated to the status of academic material, with several graduate students working on doctorates based on the books. Karline McLain, of the University of Texas, is soon to submit her PhD thesis on the title “Whose Immortal Picture Stories? Amar Chitra Katha and the Construction of Indian Identities.” McLain, who spent a year in India going through archives of the comic, attending editorial meetings at the ACK offices and interviewing artists and authors of the books, says, “I believe these comics provide a unique opportunity for studying the definition and negotiation of Indian identities.”

McLain is not the only one. Graduate work on the series is picking up, although little critical work as yet exists on the comics. In the cut-throat world of post-graduate research in arts that may be part of the attraction: PhDs are supposed to be on original subjects, and the accumulated masses of theses exhausting every conceivable angle relating to well-known authors can make such originality difficult. But the academic interest in Amar Chitra Katha is also evidence of a wider fact about the series: in unexpected corners of the world, it acts as an ambassador for Indian culture. The non-resident Indian market for the series is strongest where Indian communities are smaller and more conservative, says India Book House marketing director Lata Vaswani. Places like the Philippines, where Vaswani herself grew up. “The values of those Indians date from the time they left India,” she says. “Children there are much more conservatively raised than those in India. For them, Amar Chitra Katha is an induction into Indian culture.” Indeed, Archit Goyal, a ten-year-old Indian boy living in Cyprus wrote to the Times with a grievance related to the series. “My father brought me a few Amar Chitra Kathabooks for me to get familiar with Indian history,” he says, but complains about an inconsistent detail in two of the books, ‘‘Chanakya’’ and ‘‘Chandragupta Maurya.’’

Editor Anant Pai responds that the two comics are based on different epics that recount the same incidents: “There will be quite a few discrepancies of this kind particularly in very ancient history. That is why we mention the source on which our story is based on the inside cover page.” Due to this fidelity to historical sources, the series has become a watchword for accuracy. Pai recalls that in the first book he produced, ‘‘Krishna’’ (1969), the incident of Krishna lifting a mountain on his little finger was omitted as it seemed too fantastic. But when, at an international Ramayana mela in Mumbai in 1975, Pai saw a delegate answer a question about who Rama’s mother had been, and pull out a copy of an Amar Chitra Katha for corroboration, “I was astonished,” he says. “At that point I decided to stop tampering with the stories.” India Book House is even thinking about entering the animation market with TV animations based on Amar Chitra Katha stories. Animation specialist Ram Mohan says, “I think it is an excellent idea for Amar Chitra Kathato enter animation. The time is ripe for it, and animation is taken more seriously in India now.” Amar Chitra Katha spurs research (TIMES NEWS NETWORK, MONDAY, JULY 05, 2004)