When Draupadi says #MeToo: Indian comics reimagining gender justice

Abstract

Comics are a familiar and widespread form of popular culture within India and throughout the diaspora. They offer a unique format for the examination of new landscapes of gender relations and can broaden, albeit in an exploratory way, the boundaries and expressions of power and agency. Visual storytelling, through a set of graphic texts, presents a particularly evocative context for gender critique of sexual violence and for analyzing terrains of social inequality and injustice, especially when read with an eye toward the contemporary backdrop of the #MeToo movement. In this article, I analyze three distinct but interconnected Indian comics/graphic novels which endeavor to retell sections of the Mahabharat, an Indian epic involving a pivotal female character named Draupadi, whose unique life and trauma have served as creative muse for literature, theater, art and media. The contemporary resonance of these women-centered retellings, and the subject matter they explore highlight precise forms of gendered violence, the social construction of gender, and gendered manifestations of rage. They demand closer engagement with the visual texts themselves and the cultural milieu that shapes the politics of their production and reception.