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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. |
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