Emergency’s children: satire in the hindi comics of Hawaldar Bahadur

Abstract

This article explores an unusual connection between the poetics of ancient Sanskrit drama and Hindi comics. This interconnection highlights how satire was used in Hindi comics after India’s twenty-one-month Emergency was declared from 1975 to 1977. I argue that Hawaldar Bahadur comics negotiate with the ancient Vidushaka tradition of Sanskrit drama to overcome the angst of the post-Emergency world. In the first part of the article, I analyse the function of Vidushaka, a humorous character considered to be the personification of laughter, by first looking into its earliest example, the Sanskrit satire play, Bhagavadajjukiyam (The Ascetic and the Courtesan). I then study the modern rendering of the Vidushaka tradition through an analysis of Habib Tanvir’s 1975 production of Charandas Chor (Charandas the Thief). In the second part of the article, I demonstrate how Hawaldar Bahadur of Manoj comics deploys the idiom of Vidushaka to create a new model of resistance, which in turn critiques the mainstream discourse of resistance – that is, of the ‘angry young man’ popularised by Bahadur of Indrajal comics. Overall, I examine satire in Hindi comics to understand how humorous characters have contested the discourse of an autocratic nation-state.