Epic Graphic

Recovering Dalit Bahujan Histories through Words and Pictures

Sailen Routray

A stamp issued on Savitribai Phule issued by Government of India in 1998
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons 

 

This essay discusses two graphic books, one on Bhimrao Ambedkar and the other on the couple  Savitribai Phule and Jyotirao Phule, that were published almost a decade back. These volumes have, by now, helped set the benchmark in India in picture books that narrate marginal life histories. These have also helped us evolve a visual grammar that allows us to celebrate such lives in art despite the suffering that the protagonists had had to go through.   

A Gardener in the Wasteland (AGITW) is a reworking of the anti-caste, tract Gulamgiri by the Maharashtrian social reformer and anti-caste polemicist, Jotirao Govindrao Phule. Bhimayana is a graphic retelling of some key incidents in the life of the dalit visionary, theorist, independent India’s first law minister, and the chairperson of the drafting committee of the Indian Constitution, Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.  

Bhimayana is perhaps the first such book about the life of Ambedkar. It picks up a few key events in his life, drawn from the piece “Waiting for a Visa” in Volume 12 of the multi-volume Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, edited by Vasant Moon. The first section of Bhimayana tells us stories regarding water, and the ways in which the experience of discrimination that Dalits have faced in India has been framed through such narratives.

In the first of these stories, young Bhim often goes thirsty in school because, in the multi-caste school that he studies in, the school attendant has to fetch water from the fountain and give it to him as he is an “untouchable” and is not allowed to access water directly.

In the second of these stories, on a family trip to Goregaon in Mumbai where Ambedkar’s father is posted, he, along with other members of his family, find it difficult to get a tonga to travel for a part of the journey as no tonga driver agrees to serve untouchables. They also go without food and water on this trip, as no one is willing to give them water, so they find it difficult to eat the spicy food that young Bhim’s aunt had packed for them. 

Water, and the beings, and discriminations spawned in it, in many ways frames the narratives of Bhimayana. Fishes frame and animate many of the pages of the book. For example, on page 54, a tank whose water is denied to Dalits takes the shape of a huge fish. This particular picture tells the story of the denial of access for Dalits to a  public tank in Chakwara village in Rajasthan, drawing upon a report in news magazine Tehelka in 2008. The book shuttles between the past and present, the indignities faced by the London School of Economics and Columbia University educated Ambedkar, and the continuing violence and discrimination faced by Dalits in India. 

The Cover of 'Bhimayana' (Wikimedia Commons)

The art work by the wife and husband team of Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam illuminates the narrative in startling ways. They belong to the Pardhan Gond community of Central India. Bhimayana’s art work is located in the broader tradition of Gond art. This book is an act of homage to artist Jangarh Singh Shyam (1960-2001) who can be seen as the “father” of the “Jangarh Kalam” of modern Indian art. 

Page number five of Bhimayana carries the first artwork of the book, and it is a full-length portrait of Shyam. Rendered in the Jangarh Kalam style, the portrait has bullocks running on his arms, fishes swimming in his torso, a bird and a deer on his legs. In a neat inversion of “the personality of the artist in his work”, what we have in this portrait is the evocation of the social ecology and art world of an artist. Instead of finding the artist in his art work, in a delightful inversion of the platitudes and debates of western aesthetics, we literally find the artist’s art in him, albeit in this case inside his portrait.

The book is littered with similar irreverent and playful inversions of the western graphic book genre. Instead of the narratives being framed by ‘sidebars’ we have digna patterns from Gond art arriving at some form of paneling. Patterns of rice, mustard seeds, and moa grass are used to fill blank spaces. Chapter number headings morph into rats and snakes, amongst other creatures. 

Reflecting the social ecology of Gondi art, trains become snakes, tanks become fishes, peacocks signify the joy in the hearts of the people of Chalisgaon while welcoming Ambedkar; and, elephants and cows join the five lakh-strong human multitudes congregated for perhaps the biggest single event of conversion (from Hinduism to Buddhism) in human history in 1956 led by him.

Bhimayana is also an act of recovery and restoration. Although Ambedkar  has perhaps more statues erected to him than other comparable Indians such as Gandhi and Nehru put together, he remains a Dalit icon, and not really a national one. Although he fought his battles against untouchability and caste discrimination on universal principles, he is perceived as a Dalit intellectual. It is the supposedly parochial conventions of Gondi art that go a long way in restoring Ambedkar to the universal narrative of human freedom without excising him from the living, and suffering, community to which he belongs.

Like Bhimayana, AGITW is also a pioneering work. As mentioned in the blurb, it is perhaps the first graphic rendering of a historical work of non-fiction in India. It recovers Savitribai’s life from the forgetfulness of Indian history. She played a key role in the anti-caste crusade of Phule.

The wasteland in the title of AGITW refers to the wasteland of caste, and the gardener is Jotiba Phule. He was unique amongst the 19th century social reformers in India. He was resolutely anti-caste and steadfastly opposed the formulations of Hindu scriptures and myths. He foresaw the role that widespread, common school education could play in checking the excesses of caste-based prejudices and discriminations, and in moving towards a more egalitarian society. 

Cover of 'A Gardner in the Wasteland'

AGITW  is also a beautiful book. In comparison with Bhimayana, however, it pales in lustre. In many ways this book is also an act of restoration. Although the polemic in Gulamgiri is between Jotiba and his friend, Dhondiba, AGITW tries to recover the life of Jotiba’s wife, Savitribai Phule’s life as well from the forgetfulness of Indian history. 

Savitribai played a crucial role in the anti-caste crusade of Phule, and was a key influence on his ideas and formulations. This book tries to restore her story by framing the book’s narrative through her experiences and not only through Jotiba’s. 

The artwork in the book is spare, yet competently and beautifully done. My chief quibble with this book, in a lighter vein, is the way it treats human body hair. All the “unlikeable” people in this volume have an excess of body hair. Why? 

Navayana, the publisher of these two volumes, must be congratulated for producing the books. Both deserve to be widely read, not only for the life histories narrated by them that we must engage with, but also for the visual feast they offer to our eyes.

Bibliographic Details: Srividya Natarajan and Aparajita Ninan. 2011. A Gardener in the Wasteland. New Delhi: Navayana. 128 Pages. Rs. 220.

Durgabai Vyam, Subhas Vyam, Srividya Natarajan and S Anand. 2011. Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability. New Delhi: Navayana. 106 Pages. Rs.395

Note: A different version of this review essay was first published in the newsmagazine 'Hard News' in 2012.