Grassroots juggernaut: A movement in comics journalism gathers pace

While fans flocked to the Comic Con, in India's small towns and villages, comics are making headlines for underrepresented localities

Good morning, here are today’s headlines: Bairawas, a gram panchayat in Rajasthan, has imposed a fine on dowry practices; shrimp farming is hampering the growth of mangroves in Kerala; and the residents of villages in the Northeastern states have to still travel miles in search of public bathrooms, every day. For detailed coverage, please look to the walls of your nearest schools, urban slums, or remote villages. You'll find the news on sheets of comics.

As Delhi wraps up its annual Comic Con, held this weekend, comics have moved beyond such urban fairs and book shops.

The World Comics India (WCI), a small but dedicated army of comics artists and journalists, led by founder Sharad Sharma, has been using the form to report news that national bulletins often miss. Each edition of these “newspapers on walls” — a single sheet of comics, drawn and written by members of marginalised communities in their own language — spreads awareness around their myriad issues within their immediate localities.

Participants hold up their creations, which will then be scanned and circulatedParticipants hold up their creations, which will then be scanned and circulated

These comics sheets — or grassroots comics — are photocopied and pasted on walls across the localities the issue of which they talk about. These can be found in the villages of Rajasthan, Kashmir, Sikkim, Manipur, Kerala – in fact, in most states of India.

But why comics? Why tell the news in a graphic form?

Sharma, a journalist who began as a political cartoonist in Rajasthan’s Alwar district and started reporting at a grassroots level early in his career, says the idea of presenting news in the form of comics was born out of necessity.

Working with a collective of development journalists called Charkha, Sharma led the production of what the collective called “Deewar Akhbar”, or newspaper on the wall. Cheaply produced and circulated in remote rural villages, this wall newspaper reported on several grassroots issues in each of its editions. It was word-heavy and carried “serious stories, about hoarding in ration shops, child marriage, girl-child abuse, etc, Sharma says.

Because it was being circulated within these tight-knit communities and intimate geographic areas, many locals would shy away from reporting about the ground realities, fearing a backlash from more powerful and influential members of the community. There was also the issue of accessibility.

“News in this form, we realised, was not very accessible to the readers in the smaller communities. Who had the time to read full-length news pages hung on walls? People would glimpse at the images, probably read the first few lines, and then move on,” says Sharma.

Colour printed on A2 sheets, the Deewar Akhbar was also difficult to reproduce. And so, Sharma and his peers began developing the idea of visual-heavy news pages. 

The WCI developed over 7 to 8 years, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, training both locals as well as volunteers through a series of workshops across all 28 states and eight Union Territories. Participants, of whom there could be nearly a hundred in a single workshop, were taught how to draw their own characters, initially by Sharma and then by volunteers.

News on the right to music in Majuli Dwip in Assam

With limited words and larger pictures drawn on two A4-size sheets, which were then pasted together and photocopied in black and white, the production process too became cheaper and much more easily reproducible. “People could stop their bicycles for a few minutes in front of the bus stop or the panchayat house, or school buildings, and get the news,” says Sharma.

Drawn in a simple 2X2 panel format, the comics might be at times comparable to a child’s doodle but invariably present a diverse spectrum of styles of visual representation. The issues are as varied — from the acts of violence and discrimination faced by youths of Nagaland and Mizoram in the national capital to the recounting of the hardships endured by the Rohingyas during their journey from Myanmar.

Comics by Rohingya refugees: Comics drawn by Rohingya refugees pasted on a wall in a Rajasthan village

As mainstream comics publishers celebrate the return of the Comic Con this year, after almost three years, Sharma and WCI volunteers, too, are raring to be back in the midst of underrepresented communities.

While WCI had been conducting virtual workshops for students in institutes like the Indian Institute of Mass Communication or Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, among others, during the pandemic it wasn’t able to reach out to participants at the grassroots the way it could earlier.

“It’s not the same. Communicating with participants on the ground helps us connect with the unique visual perspective of their local issues," says Rhea Rajashekharan (name changed on request), a graduate from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication who has worked as a volunteer with WCI and has also attended a few of the recent virtual workshops. "While many of these remote areas also have access to smartphones and the internet now, it is the in-person workshops and their resultant hand-drawn comics bulletins that have proven to be more effective in communicating their issues.”

In Sonapur, Assam, for instance, mushroom farmers who had attended one of the workshops have continued using the medium to spread awareness about not only their products but also the issues faced by the local farming communities. This has led to several local traders and trade organisations investing both in their farming businesses and in the overall infrastructure of the small town.

In the Tondiarpet locality of Chennai, Srimathi Balasubramani’s efforts with grassroots comics have inspired male students from nearby government colleges to take up the issues of domestic abuse and discrimination faced by women in the area during their pregnancy. Amarnath Gopalakrishnan, also from Chennai, has helped Sri Lankan refugees tell their stories through comics to Indian NGOs as well as foreign media during the months of economic and political turmoil in the island nation.

The grassroots comics, in that sense, have expanded into a pan-national, and even global, movement carried forward by former volunteers and attendees of the WCI workshops. Rajashekharan herself has gone on to draw comics for the Black Lives Matter movements in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, working with comics activists such as Ben Passmore, and “exchanging notes on grassroots comics”.

“Comics universalise as well as amplify the impact of the news. The story of one Dalit farmworker getting beaten to death for reporting late to his employer’s farm becomes the story of all such farmers who have faced brutality in the region,” explains Rupert Craven, an attendee of one of the several workshops Sharma has conducted across 30 countries. Craven is currently working on compiling his debut graphic novel documenting the hardships of migrant workers in India.

As Sharma points out, “It’s not about creating comics. When people come together to discuss their local issues, not only are they shaping much-needed debates in their immediate communities but they are also challenging their own pre-conceptions.”

Above all, adds Rajshekharan, the makers of grassroots comics are falsifying the assumption that only certain people with the required writing and drawing skills can report news, or draw comics. 

News through comics

• World Comics India has held workshops across all Indian states and 30 countries
• People tell their own stories in their local language for local consumption
• Movement is being carried forward by former volunteers and participants
• Simple 2X2 panel format comics are posted on walls
• Large images, sparse wording used to tell stories

Piyusha-Gupta: A comic strip on the issues faced by youth from Manipur when they travel to Delhi

Dhanya-Venkatesh: A comic strip that raises the issue of debates over the dress-code