11. Prof. Dorothy Figuiera

Abstract 11: Prof. Dorothy Figuieira

"Bhimayana: One Ramayana among Many." 

In this paper I examine how Ambedkar has faired in artistic renderings in recent years.  I focus primarily on his biography had recently taken graphic form with the clever title, the Bhimayana.  None of the reviews seemed to comment on the fact that the title clearly indicated that this graphic biography of Ambedkar was written as a reworking of the Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic that has undergone many rewritings. 

What is so interesting about the many versions of the Ramayana is the manner in which, as Paula Richman and A.K Ramanujan have shown, they all present a counter-discourse to the Urtext, the Valmiki Ramayana.  As such, they comprise a dissident literature that can be seen as  answering back the brahmanical ideology expressed in the epic. In this paper, I look at how the Bhimayana functions as a rewriting of the epic in the pictoral form of the graphic novel.

I will examine how its dissenting position is shaped by its mode of expression.  In particular, I will look at how the interplay between word and image in the text contributes to the subversion of the nationalist narrative of the epic.  The format presents a challenge to traditional modes of reading image and word together.