Politics of History through Amar Chitra Katha: With reference to the title of

Prithviraj Chauhan.

By
Mrittika Saha
Dept. of Comparative Literature
Jadavpur University

Amar Chitra Katha was founded by Anant Pai in 1967 as an attempt to make the young
generation get connected to the roots of their nation and its history and culture. It
became a necessity due to the increasing colonial hangover that the people were going
through in post-partition times. The Colonial rulers stated that the native people were
weak in every military and technological aspect. Indian education and its literature and
culture had no value; history and culture were not even defined so that people could
even learn about it. Of course, everything that the West had to offer was much better in
every way and Indians should be grateful that they were getting ‘civilised’ and
‘educated’.

The effect was so deep-rooted that it was felt for quite sometime after the partition of
India and is even effective to date in some way or the other, mainly in forms of lingual,
educational and lifestyle hegemonies. One of the major results of this, as noticed by
Anant Pai, was that the young generation had knowledge about Western mythology and
history but not of the Indian ones; not even about the epics- The Ramayana and The
Mahabharata, something that was considered to be very basic to the Indian people and
the sense of ‘Indianness’.

Anant Pai came up with Amar Chitra Katha to combat the effect of colonial hangover
that the young generation was facing, also in due time, curing it in the adults as well. He
published the mythological and historical stories and lives of the ‘heroes’ of India to
show that Indians were not ‘born’ weak, they were made to believe it. Indians, be it
mythical or historical characters and people, were no less than the West in military and
technological prowess. They were courageous and daring people who never accepted
defeat till their last breath. In a nutshell, he published the glorious history of India and
Indian culture in an interesting form of comic books.

Even though there was a huge debate about comics being useful, that is, being
educationally effective or not, Amar Chitra Katha kept no stone unturned while
marketing it. It correctly pulled those strings which would make their comics sell, like
children going back to the roots of their culture and history and learning about the
glorious and dark events of sacrifices and bravery, becoming an Indian in its true sense;
also it being similar to their Grandparents telling them the stories(because the nuclear
families rose in number and children got separated from their grandparents, thus
missing out on the storytelling sessions. Grandparents telling stories about the Indian
historical and mythological events was one of the major ways people learnt about the
country during the times of ‘cultural amnesia’). Thus, these comic books became quite
popular.

Talking about rewriting history through the Amar Chitra Katha titles, it can be said that
the history of India was a product of imperialistic discourse. It talked about different
historical events based on the texts and researches available, however rare in number.
Most of them considered that Mughal/Islamic rule in India to be the worst which initiated
the degradation of the original ‘Hindu’ culture, the notion got doubly supported by the
European scholars at that time because the medieval age in their history is considered
to be the ‘dark age’ and thus, for the ease of studying and understanding Indian history
that they were writing, they categorised the medieval age as the dark age in India as
well. The categorisation of history into time periods is a product of the imperialist
discourse for the ease of remembering and studying it. Even though there were a lot of
artistic developments and creations during the Islamic invasions, people looked at the
negative aspects of it more and in the case of European history, the Islamic invasions
gave rise to Crusades and different sorts of wars, whether religious or not and all the
anarchy made the scholars consider the medieval period to be the dark ages even
though there were several positives to look at.

In the Indian context, the imperialist strategy was followed for Amar Chitra Katha
concerning the Islamic and Mughal invasions. Mughals were not originally from
so-called the Indian landmass, so they were considered to be outsiders who invaded
the country, destroyed everything, looted the riches of India and exploited it furthermore
and established their cultural hegemony on the people. Thus, in any historical event that
involved wars between any Indian born king or ruler and a Mughal ruler, valour and
courage are emphasized on the Indian ruler side(considering the Mughals to be
outsiders). For example, in the title of Prithviraj Chauhan, one of the greatest Rajput
rulers of India, all the valour and courage is shown on the titular character’s side and the
Mughal ruler, Shahabuddin Ghori is seen as the villain who caused anarchy and
invaded various kingdoms. One can realise it from the illustrations in the cover, in the
comic book itself and through the adjectives used- ‘valour’ and ‘chivalrous’ for Chauhan.
Also, anyone who sided with the Mughals was negative; in this case, Jaichand sided
with Ghori while he defeated Chauhan.

Coming to the Amar Chitra Katha’s way of telling historical events, it followed two
discourses based on the narratives and conveniences. One was the imperialistic one
which has been discussed. The second one would be the colonial discourse. Amar
Chitra Katha was keen on bringing back the Indian history and culture in all its glory
when the colonial rulers had already done the damage to the nation and its elements.
Therefore, while showing the British as the villain in some titles, they counted the
Mughals to be a part of Indian rulers, who were very much keen and serious about
protecting the nation, its valour and respect with their lives; who were very keen about
the development of the country and so, they passed laws accordingly; who were all
about the Hindustan and its glorious development and not at all on the side of the
wicked colonial rulers.

In the Prithviraj Chauhan title, repeatedly it has been shown that the Rajput valour and
chivalry was more important an anything else. Every time there was an event of the war
or any discussions about the military expertise, Prithviraj Chauhan was shown to be an
expert in it. Whether it is archery or defeating the people of Jaichand and successfully
taking away Samayogita, Chauhan has been the most efficient and most masculine
king(British tagged Indians to be feminine and weak). There are panels in various points
of the story where people praise Prithviraj Chauhan to be the greatest ruler, praise his
archery and fighting expertise and his intelligence and masculinity. He is shown as a
great king who fulfils his duties religiously and thinks about the welfare of people. In
every battle, it is said that he fought with immense bravery and courage and were proud
as Rajput to sacrifice his life on the battlefield while saving his kingdom. As a man of
honour and chivalry, he also respects the woman he loves and does everything to make
Samayogita his wife and does everything to keep her honour intact. Although, it is
shown that he tends to ignore his kingly duties for a while after getting married- which
gives off the impression that women were ‘objects of distractions’, which leads to a new
point.

Samayogita is the only daughter of the king Jaichand who was against Chauhan. He
never agreed to the relationship that Chauhan and Samayogita shared and thus
arranged for a ‘swayamvar’ or a gathering of the suitors. On one hand, it is evident that
women in those times had no right to choose their life decisions. On the other hand,
Samayogita’s firm decision to marry the love of her life and going away with him, all
against her family, is something that most women could not even imagine in those days
(can be considered an aspect of her valour). Also, not to forget that the women were still
not as much empowered as it might be shown off in the story. They were considered to
be the objects of patriarchy, a distraction(here, Samayogita being one who kept
Chauhan ‘distracted’ from his kingly duties when Ghori was busy planning the battle)
and someone who’d be faithful to their husbands and duties the entire life(just like
Samayogita did). The ritual of ‘Jauhar’ that the Rajput women performed when they
knew that their husbands died on the battlefield and the army had lost the battle to save
themselves from getting exploited and abused by other men apart from their husbands,
they preferred to burn to death in a huge pyre. Samayogita was no exception when
Chauhan was defeated and captured by Ghori. The ritual of ‘Jauhar’ is valorised to
show the fact that the Indians or rather women were not weak; they could sacrifice
anything for their nation and family without thinking twice.

The character of Jaichand is shown as a traitor. He was supposed to side with Rajputs
in the battle but he chose to side with Ghori, the Mughal invader. Therefore, anyone
who sided with the Mughals was negative in every aspect. Thus Jaichand was one of
them too.

Shahabuddin Ghori’s character as a villain strengthened while showing the torture that
he did on Prithviraj Chauhan. He ordered to burn Chauhan’s eyes because he refused
to look down while interacting with Ghori after he got captured. This gave away the
notion that Mughals were atrocious and torturous people who exploited and tortured the
Indians and the Indian land in the worst way possible.

Amar Chitra Katha aimed to bring back all the bravery and valour that the Indians had
before the colonial invasion and to some extent before the Mughal invasions as well. All
in all, the motive behind this was to show that Indian history was filled with tales of
courage and bravery and sacrifices, rather more of those than the Western counterparts
and thus, these were also something that should be read and considered in the same
arena. Coming to the writing of the historical aspects, this series adapted to various
discourses according to their conveniences while telling different tales. History is
considered to be biased, and Amar Chitra Katha showed the bias-ness to some extent
while ‘stating the facts’. Therefore, one can never be completely sure of what actually
happened however, one can relate to the popular storyline and somehow agree to the
closest narrative, in this case, it is the title of Pritviraj Chauhan.