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He conducted an experiment in a Delhi school to establish that the comic format works well as a mode of communication for young minds. Pai found this alienation from Indian cultural roots disturbing. His nieces and nephews also showed him stories they had written that had characters with English names. It is said that once Pai watched a quiz contest on Doordarshan where children could answer questions on Greek mythology but did not know the name of Rama’s mother. Trained as a chemical engineer, Pai joined the publishing industry in the 1960s, and was employed by the publication division of the Times of India.
#AMAR CHITRA KATHA INDIA SERIES#
Mandrake, Buzz Sawyer, Flash Gordon, Kerry Drake, etc., were other American comic book characters that were syndicated and published by Indrajal Comics (Courtesy: Rahul Kumar)Īmar Chitra Katha: Shift towards ‘Indigenous’ Comic BooksĪ major break in the publication of Hindi comic books came in 1967 when India Book House started the Amar Chitra Katha series helmed by Anant Pai.
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Phantom or Vetaal was the most popular comic book character in India published by Indrajal Comics.
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Bengalla became Denkali and Rama became Ramalu.įig. Since Phantom was translated into Hindi, the editors of Indrajal made some minor changes to these names to avoid confusion among Indian readers and controversies because of phonetically Indian names. Phantom operated in the mythical land of Bengalla, and the name of his father’s killer was Rama. Hindi journalist Dinesh Shrinet says that Vetal represents a strong critique of modern civilisation, which is marked by various forms of social and structural depravities. He fights against the poachers, and the industrial and mining corporations that want to exploit the rich bounty of the forest. Vetal is a forest guardian who looks after tribal groups and the wildlife. Cultural theorist Raminder Kaur and social scientist Saif Eqbal argue that Phantom may have been a mascot of colonialism, a white man located in dark lands, but Indianised as Vetal, thus his adventures became relevant and engrossing. The popularity of Vetal among Indian readers owed to the freshness of his adventures, fluidity of his character and the places in which he operated. 1) He was renamed Vetal or Chalta Firta Pret (the phantom who walks) to suit the Hindi readership. The Phantom quickly became one of the most popular comic book superheroes in the subcontinent. The translation of these American comic books into Hindi made them more accessible to a large section of young readers in India. The first 32 issues contained stories of American cartoonist Lee Falk’s character Phantom, but after that Indrajal also started to publish characters such as Falk’s Mandrake, and superheroes designed by other American cartoonists such as Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby and Phil Corrigan, Roy Crane’s Buz Sawyer, Allen Saunders’s Mike Nomad and Kerry Drake, and Steve Dowling’s Garth. But the history of Hindi comic books, according to Kunzle’s definition, can be traced back to 1964, when Indrajal Comics, an offshoot of Times Group, published the first ever Hindi comic book titled Vetal ki Mekhla (The Phantom’s Belt). The forerunners and prototypes of comic books existed in India in the form of cartoons and strips that were found in Delhi Sketch Book and Awadh Punch, which started publication in 18, respectively. According to him, the medium has to be more visual than textual, and it must be possible to be produced on a mass level. Kunzle says that a comic book must have a sequence of separate images that tell a story which is both moral and topical. David Kunzle’s definition is most suited to the idea of comic books in India. Comic books are an integral component of contemporary media culture, and extending their studies into a new and fascinating realm of non-Western popular culture certainly seems timely.Īs an object, comic books have been defined by several scholars.
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They are no longer synonymous with banality, and have captured the interest of a growing number of scholars working in the field of historically oriented social sciences. The notion that comic books are unworthy of serious investigation has given way to a widening curiosity about them as artefacts, commodities, codes and pedagogical tools.