HISTORY OF COMICS IN INDIA
They came into existence after 1947, saw a golden period in the 1980s, fell in popularity by the late ’90s, but now look ready for a revival. The bewitchment with Indian comic books continues
They came into existence after 1947, saw a golden period in the 1980s, fell in popularity by the late ’90s, but now look ready for a revival. The bewitchment with Indian comic books continues.
Ijust learnt last week that I am a xennial, a word that my computer still feels is a typing mistake. In the Indian context, it represents a generation that travelled long distances in trains every summer to spend time with relatives, buying comic books from AH Wheeler stalls at railway stations. Times were simpler and so were our imaginary friends – a village do-gooder with a brain that worked faster than a computer, a shape-shifting snakeman or a dog-faced vigilante who would punish gangsters with style.
Back in the day, before 1947, comic books were an alien concept to a nation busy fighting for its freedom.
“During the Second World War, groups of foreign soldiers used to take a small railway line from Bombay to another place from where they would go to Burma,” recalls artist and author Aabid Surti, the creator of comic book hero Bahadur. “The trains in which they travelled were very slow. I used to run after them along with other kids. Sometimes a soldier would throw us chocolates, coins etc.. Once a soldier threw a comic book. We had never seen one before and all of us pounced on it and ripped it apart. I ended up getting one page. It was a Mickey Mouse comic. I loved the art so much that I started copying it. Because of that one page I am a cartoonist today.” Surti created many memorable cartoon characters, including the quirky middle-class philosopher Dhabbuji.
GOING DESI
But it wasn’t until 1964 that a comic book imprint was launched – Indrajal. The first Indrajal comic, Phantom’s Belt (Vetal Ki Mekhla in Hindi) was released in 1964. The adventures of Phantom became a rage with Indian readers, he was rechristened Vetal in Hindi and Oronyo Deb in Bangla.
There was another revolution waiting to happen. The late Anant Pai, widely regarded as the father of Indian comics, worked in the publishing industry and dreamt of making Indian comics with stories drawn from Indian history and culture, drawn by Indian artists. During a visit to Delhi in the late ’60s, he saw a TV quiz show, where none of the young contestants knew the name of Ram’s mother though they could answer questions about Greek gods. This made Pai all the more determined. He met GL Mirchandani and HG Mirchandani of the publishing house, IBH, and though they were cautious, they gave him the go-ahead. Pai began hunting for an artist to work on the first Indian Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), based on the adventures of Krishna.
He found cartoonist Ram Waeerkar, who showed Pai his drawings in the Indian ornamental style that Pai had in mind. Waeerkar, who died in 2003, did the maximum ACK titles. ACK’s first original Indian comic book, Krishna, was a big hit. With over five million copies sold, it remains their best-selling title till date.
Indrajal too was ready to launch its first Indian comic book hero. They contacted Aabid Surti who had already created Inspector Azaad, a popular character, and asked him to create a new comic book hero. “Dacoits were a big nuisance in the ’70s, especially in central and northern India, so I based my hero in Chambal. I wanted to make him a progressive Indian, so we made him wear a kurta and jeans,” says Surti of Bahadur, who went on to become one of India’s most-loved comic book heroes. The first Bahadur story The Red Brick House (Laal Haveli Ka Rahasya in Hindi) released in 1976 and was a massive success. Indrajal tried coming up with other Indian heroes like Aditya and Dara in the late ’80s but none proved as successful as Bahadur.
NO GORE PLEASE
Meanwhile, a silent revolution was taking place in north India. A bunch of artists and publishers was ready to storm the comics scene. In Delhi, two big players emerged: Diamond Comics (1978) and Raj Comics (1986). One of the major cartoonists who came up was Pran Kumar Sharma. Pran’s comic strips, notably featuring Chacha Chaudhary, stayed away from direct violence. They were about a utopian world where an old man Chacha Chaudhary would fight crime using his wit and at times a bamboo stick. He was an unlikely superhero, an antithesis to the very idea of square-jawed western superheroes. “I thought of an old man, short, bald and a little frail, but I based him on Chanakya and gave him the power of wit. This is how Chacha Chaudhary was conceived,” said Pran in a 2009 interview. He died in 2014.
Chacha Chaudhary started as a syndicated strip in 1969 and became a roaring success. He entered the world of comic books with Chacha Chaudhary Antariksh Mein, published by Diamond Comics in 1980. Cartoonist Pran saw so much bloodshed when his family moved from Pakistan to India in 1948, that all his life, he tried to stay away from showing blood in his comics. Even when he created the eponymous baddie Raka in Chacha Chaudhary Aur Raka, where he had to draw blood, it always had a tinge of tar, a blackness to it.
Aversion to drawing blood is something that was true of other comic book creators too who were products of Partition. Such as Gulab Kapoor, publisher of humour comic magazine Madhu Muskan. Even when he started publishing the whodunnit detective comic series Babloo, artist Husain Zamin was asked to make the blood white.
THE INDIAN SUPERHEROES
One of India’s first scifi superheroes, Faulaadi Singh, was created by Diamond Comics, who also added kid detectives Rajan-Iqbal to their roster of heroes. The names Rajan Iqbal were already popular, thanks to the best-selling children’s novels written by SC Bedi. The success of Rajan Iqbal kickstarted the buddy-detective genre in Indian comics. To bring about a sense of national integration, most of these duos had one Hindu and one Muslim character – Ram Rahim, Sagar Salim etc.
By the mid 1980s, Indian comics had reached their golden age, with more than 20 publishers in the fray. But India was changing and Indian comics had to change with the times. The assassination of Indira Gandhi made terrorism a household word. Two years later, the newly-launched Raj Comics announced its flagship character Nagraj, whose mission was to fight terrorism.
“We wanted to create a superhero who had his base in Indian mythology and what better than a superhero who had the powers of a naag,” says Sanjay Gupta, the co-creator of Nagraj. The covers of Nagraj comics were aesthetically painted and had a James Bond movie feel to them. Drawn by Pratap Mulick and written by Sanjay Gupta, Nagraj became a trendsetter in many ways. Now every publisher wanted costumed superheroes in their comics.
Meanwhile, Anant Pai was editing Tinkle, a magazine he had launched in 1980. Tinkle stands out as one of the best-selling kids’ magazines even now and its characters like Suppandi, Kaalia The Crow, Shikari Shambhu etc. are hugely popular, even after more than three decades.
But the flavour of the day remained superheroes. Nagraj aur Bughaku, a double-sized comic book starring Raj Comics’ flagship characters Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruv published in 1991, sold more than 900,000 copies within the first three months of its release, a record that still remains unmatched.
What followed was a wave of Indian superheroes published by old and new publishers alike. Raj Comics expanded its superhero universe; their most interesting creation was Doga, India’s first anti-hero, who wears the mask of a dog and roams the streets of Mumbai. Around the same time, Indrajal Comics took its last breath and shut down.
While the comic book villains could never defeat the heroes, the advent of cable and video games did. By the late ’90s most of the publishers had shut shop and by the early 2000s there were only two big players left, Raj Comics and Diamond Comics. But the late 2000s saw a revival – older readers began returning to their favourite imaginary friends and buying the books they had drooled over at lending libraries. With the onset of a geek culture, new readers were also ready to sample these titles. Technology helped characters like Nagraj, Dhruv and Doga to leap out of comic book pages and land on our smartphones. Publishers like Raj Comics are reprinting their old titles. Things are looking up.