(CON) TEXTUALISING GOND ART AND PAINTINGS FOR LIFE WRITING AND INDIAN GRAPHIC NARRATIVE: REFERENCE TO BHIMAYANA: EXPERIENCES OF UNTOUCHABILITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v5.i1.2024.884Keywords:
Bhimayana, Gond Style, Graphic Narrative, Digna, Life Writing, Indian ComicAbstract [English]
The pictorial Gond style of artwork has its roots in the tribal Gond art tradition adopted for narrativising fiction Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability (2012), life writings of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. The Pradhan Gond artists Subhash Vyam and Durgabai Vyam interweave historical events with contemporary incidents using the Digna pattern of the Gond style visualising the stories with immense nuances and dynamics. The novel Bhimayana adopted Gond art to visualise and narrate the life of Ambedkar in a new way of seeing and corresponding to post-millennial trends in visual culture and comical creativity. This graphic novel Bhimayana is named after the hero for the comic version of the graphic narrative, sorrowful and miserable accounts of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. The tribal Gond art and paintings had been contextualised in this fiction for interweaving the plot by bringing back story telling, symbolism, animal imageries, colours, patterns, figurative elements, and sequence of images etc. to constitute the novel, a narrative of comic and graphic strips. This paper will emphasise how this graphic novel Bhimayana juxtaposes past, present and future spatially on the page, linearly emphasising personal and historical modes while positioning itself on the high-brow of the literary canon of life narrative and Indian comics.
Downloads
References
Chakraborty, S. (2020). Unpacking Caste Politics Through the Multimodal Communicative Landscape of Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 12(4). https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.06 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.06
Conway, C., & Sol, A. (2022). The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre. U of Nebraska Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2fccsxd
Horstkotte, S., & Pedri, N. (2011). Focalization in Graphic Narrative. Narrative, 19(3), 330–357. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2011.0021
Kothari, R. (2013). Caste in a Casteless Language? English as a Language of ‘Dalit’ Expression. Economic and Political Weekly, 60-68.
Lent, J. A. (2015). Asian Comics. Univ. press of Mississippi. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781628461589.001.0001
Maier, M. (2012). Bhimayana: Thirst for Khulla. Second Line - An Undergraduate Journal of Literary Conversation, 2 (1).
Masschelein, A., Mussgnug, F., & Rushworth, J. (2021). Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches and Questions of Genre. UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1nnwhjt DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1nnwhjt
Natarajan, S., Anand, S., Vyam, D., & Vyam, S. (2011). Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability. In Navayana New Delhi. New Delhi: Navayana.
Natarajan, S., Anand, S., Vyam, D., & Vyam, S. (2012). Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability. In Navayana New Delhi. New Delhi: Navayana.
Nayar, P. K. (2016). Radical Graphics: Martin Luther King, Jr., BR Ambedkar, and Comics Auto/Biography. Biography, 147-171. Accessed 27 Sept, 2023. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24803143 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2016.0027
Nayar, P. K. (2016). The Indian Graphic Novel: Nation, History and Critique. Routledge India. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315659435
Shamshudeen, M. K. (2022). Recasting Dalit Experience through Graphic Biography: A Critical Analysis of Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability. The Creative Launcher, 7(5), 31-36. https://doi.org/10.53032/tcl.2022.7.5.03 DOI: https://doi.org/10.53032/tcl.2022.7.5.03
Williams, P. (2020). Dreaming the Graphic Novel: The Novelization of Comics. Rutgers University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978805101
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Sushil Sarkar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute, and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.
It is not necessary to ask for further permission from the author or journal board.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
