#AMAR CHITRA KATHA SERIES SERIES#
This picture is quite consistent with the picture we grew up with of Amar Chitra Katha as the first place where we discovered depictions of female warriors and rulers in the media (considering that our only other comic book alternative in 1970s and 1980s India was the Archie series with its male-approval-seeking Betty and male-adoration-obsessed Veronica). Some of them are historical figures (and out of these historical figures, many of whom are Hindu queens and warriors, at least four women are Sikh, and two are Muslim), and others are goddesses, saints, or fictional characters, but most often shown positively as role-models of courage and integrity).
Out of these 455 titles, at least 65 titles have the name of a woman in them (it should also be noted that 65 titles having female names in the title doesn’t imply that the rest have male names many have names of places, folktales and so on). There are a total of 455 titles listed (the series was a fortnightly for the first two decades, and far more intermittent since). An easily verifiable issue here is whether the Amar Chitra Katha series, as a whole, really did “erase non-Hindu subjects” such as Muslim, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist heroes and legends, and elevate “masculinity” by denying female agency, identity, and accomplishment.Ī study of all the titles published in the Amar Chitra Katha series from 1969 to 2014 (not including compilations and special issues), reveals the facts quite plainly. I will put aside the second part of this conspiracy theory for a moment (for one thing, the now-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party did not even exist in 1969 when the Amar Chitra Series began, and even its predecessors were a marginal political presence then, nor is the dominant message of the series “targeting religious minorities and lower castes” by any leap of the imagination). To begin with, the author claims that the series “often erased non-Hindu subjects from India’s historic and religious fabric (and) … reinforced many of the most problematic tenets of Hindu nationalism … such as (the present government’s alleged) policies and rhetoric targeting religious minorities and lower castes.” I could easily list a dozen books on Buddism, Jainism, even Zarathustra has a ACK book, but you get the point. They also were one of the few people to talk about North east leaders They must have had a dozen books on sikhs:Īs for the "no books on Christians".
#AMAR CHITRA KATHA SERIES FULL#
Here are some of the books (just a sample, not an exhaustive list) on to illustrate how full of crap the author is:
If anything it whitewashed a lot of atrocities by Muslims and the British - for instance Tippu's massacres of Hindus are not mentioned. This meant that they promoted a Amar Akbar Anthony style of secularism, that had a large number of titles involving muslims and other minority religions. The funny thing is that ACK followed the liberalism of its time sincerely. The author is just butt hurt that an comic book company based in a country which is overwhelmingly (80%) Hindu, focuses on Hinduism. Another anti-hindu journalist going out of the way to writing garbage to fit in with the gora shahibs.
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