UNTOUCHABILITY AND SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION : BHIMAYANA

The Indian graphic novel Bhimayana: experiences of untouchability was published in

2012 by a New Delhi-based company called Navayana. The book charts the life of
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 – 1956) who campaigned for equal rights and an end to
social discrimination in particular towards ‘untouchables’ or ‘casteless people’ in India.
He was the principal architect of the Indian Constitution. The graphic novel blends
biography, Indian legislation, letters penned by Gandhi and primary source material in
the form of newspaper clippings of the post-millennial period. The clippings sadly
underscore how important issues of untouchability remain in today’s India. Ambedkar
grew up as an untouchable and faced discrimination throughout his life; this graphic
novel explores such instances as he is refused water, accommodation and his right to
education.

What is particularly interesting, if not curious about the production of Bhimayana is the
choice to use Gond art to visualise and narrate the story of Ambedkar, an untouchable.
In one respect, the choice is a precarious one as it might suggest to those new to Gond
art that the artists are, like Ambedkar, belonging to an untouchable caste or more
worryingly, that all ‘tribal’ or adivasi peoples are ‘untouchable’. In another respect, the
choice to tell Ambedkar’s story through tribal art makes sense, it carries impact as a
unique piece of collaboration. .

The three chapters that comprise the main narrative are framed and supported by a
conversation between a woman and a man who is complaining about the unfairness of
job quotas for Backward and Scheduled Castes while both wait for a bus. In explaining
the reason behind those quotas, the woman introduces Ambedkar and the narratives to
follow. Book One, Water, describes Ambedkar’s experiences as a Dalit child in a West
Indian village, on his first journey outside that community, and how those experiences
influenced him during later activism on behalf of Dalit communities. Meanwhile, the
second book, Shelter, shows his return to India after attending Columbia University in
America and his subsequent confrontation with discrimination. Book Three, Travel,
then finds Ambedkar traveling around India and sharing the stories from the previous
section with his Dalit colleagues. The final section concludes with the female narrator-
character describing the importance of understanding the history and continuing
influence of the concept of caste on people’s treatment of one another in India. In the
process, the authors highlight Ambedkar’s work as a revolutionary, particularly his
being ahead of his time in arguing for women’s and minority rights in the formation of
the national constitution.

Curiously, Navayana’s graphic novel Bhimayana does not only speak of the struggles
that Ambedkar faced as an untouchable in Indian society, it also narrates the struggle
for equality that Gond artists and adivasiartists more generally have faced in recent
times. In the afterword of Bhimayana, we are told by one of the artists – Durgabai – that
on her arrival at Navayana’s office in New Delhi, the landlady of the building would not
allow her and her husband in; the landlady could not believe that they were artists and
called the couple ‘yokels’. Durgabai states in the afterword – visually and narratively –
that this incident was abusive and hurtful, and that it reminded the couple of
Ambedkar’s plight.

Navayana’s Bhimayana interrogates new ways of seeing and telling contemporary

Indian history. It foregrounds an India of inequality whilst simultaneously celebrating
the artwork of the Pardhan Gonds who, like Ambedkar have faced discrimination and
maltreatment. This work plays to New India’s markets and consumer cultures whilst
simultaneously narrating the challenging but maybe more significantly, Bhimayana
allows certain ‘acts of seeing’ that subsequently translate into ‘acts of knowing’ as the
consumers of Bhimayana are involved in producing new (more relevant) meanings for
the life narratives of one of India’s most famous figures: Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.