Am I missing something here? How did the South vs. North bit creep in? I don't remember either Udhay or Thaths having brought that up.
Unless your point is that Uncle dear was dealing with Hindu myth, largely of North Indian origin, and that has an inbuilt white bias built in, unlike Hindu or other myth of South Indian origin, which is relatively free of this bias, and so it's not his fault.
This is so fragile that I can't believe you are wheeling it in as a serious argument. Neither North Indian nor South Indian myth, nor any other form of literature glorifies black over white; wherever it crops up, north or south, there is an overwhelming white bias, north and south. So the geographical origin has nothing to do with it.
Nor can it be argued with any tenable logic that the subject matter determines - or is responsible for the bias, that is: because he talks of North Indians,
white-over-black is unfortunately and inevitably the built-in cultural backdrop and if he had talked about South Indians, the complexions prevalent would have reversed this factor. The biases are the author's own.
The point about the Rajputs is not understood. They were Central Asian 'immigrants', who came in in the failing years of the Gupta empires, earlier and later, descendants for the most part of the Ephthalites, White Huns and Kushans, well-recorded in history and not subject to the quibbles of the khaki-shorts brigade. Both they and the Gujaratis display the racial characteristics of their origins even today (as do Bengalis and peoples eastward, for an equally important but far less sensationally reported incursion over centuries). Sallow, bordering on pale cream, and pronounced Mongoloid cheekbones, eyes with a definite hint of the steppes: where's the dark Rajput? You aren't talking about the current crop in Bihar and Orissa, obviously,
but about the original Tod's sun-borne, moon-borne and fire-borne heroes, right?
Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Udhay Shankar N wrote:
> Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: [ on 08:43 PM 2/21/2006 ]
>
>> > Amar Chitra Katha does not have any propoganda? Why do you think all
>> > heros are depicted as light skinned and all the asuras as dark
>> > skinned? Ever wonder why there are an inordinately large percentage of
>> > Rajput chitra kathas? Ever wondered about the favorable depiction of
>> > sati in these books? Last year I re-read some 50-60 of these books and
>> > found the jingoism in many of them nauseating.
>>
> That, however, does not really address Thaths' point(s), does it?
Well, to start with, Pai is from the konkan.. mangalore, udupi or
someplace similar. That's more or less south indian.
He started out as a distributor for Phantom, Mandrake etc - the usual DC
and other comics in India. And apparently couldnt find a single indian
comic around.
A lot of the grist to his mill has been either hindu myth (mostly
"north" centric) and Col. James Tod's "Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan".
Precious few south indian stories around that I can see (Kannagi, Tenali
Rama stories etc).
Hindu myth = places where most heroes are actually described as fair
skinned, with exceptions like Arjuna and Krishna carefully noted. And
even if the central asian etc aryan migration theory doesnt get
accepted, they were on a gradual push southwards which meant that us
"darker" south indian types were either tribals, or "monkeys"
(neanderthal type throwbacks is one theory i've heard), or "rakshasas"
The rajputs seem to be fairly equally divided between fair and dark
skinned heroes as far as I've seen.
Sati he treats as a fact of life back then, like a whole lot of other
things. He doesnt gloss over them and nor does he glorify them, that
I've seen. And as far as I've seen his history has been quite
meticulously researched, with a wide variety of what i'd consider fair
sources.
Porus? If you read the intro / editorial to that particular comic he
does point out that the man was a small time border chieftain, and if he
gave old Alex such a lot of trouble, the other, more powerful emperors
in india proper would have given him lots more grief. I didnt read too
much patriotism into what I remember of his telling of the story.
Yes there's very little south indian / dark skinned etc content in
there. And ACK publication is more or less just glossy reprints of old
content these days.
Talk to him sometime - he's still around in bombay and i'm sure he'll be
glad to listen to you, and probably convince you far better than i've done.
Indrajit Gupta
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Chennai 600 018.
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