Page 169 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

152 Joyce Smith

Dismayed by young Indians’ ignorance of their own culture, Anant Pai
in 1967 created what became Amar Chitra Katha (immortal illustrated
story), a series of comic books telling epic stories from various religious and
eventually secular traditions. The series begins with Krishna but includes
everyone from Sai Baba to Kalpana Chawla, who died aboard the space
shuttle Columbia.
Pai chose to educate the young of post-independence India by translating
“5,000 years of India’s mythology, history, legend—the very soul of Indian
culture—packed into volumes of 32 colourful pages” (India Book House as
cited by Pritchett; Pritchett 1995: 81). But he also maintained a policy of
“satyam bruyāt priyam bruyāt”: loosely, tell the truth but only the positive
elements (Hawley 1995: 115). Following the gore of Partition, it is not
surprising that Pai should want to integrate religious publics, which according
to Hawley he does in ways both obvious (depicting historically impossible
meetings between the saints [Hawley 1995: 115]) and subtle (illustrations
can suggest one tradition, while text communicates another [Hawley
1995: 128]). However, with success came increased tension: “sales versus
educational values; scholarly accuracy versus the need to appease particular
interest groups; a commitment to Indian history versus a commitment to
national integration” (Pritchett 1995: 81).
Some stories are proposed by community representatives eager to
have their tales join the Amar Chitra Katha canon. With this interaction,
Hawley suggests that the comic books become “a quasi-public institution”
(Hawley 1995: 129). “The March to Freedom” series, created after a request
by the Indian National Congress, is perhaps the most remarkable (Hawley
1995: 130).
Sometimes it is journalists who attempt to neutralize differences between
religious publics in the professed interest of the the public. In Canadian
reporting, there is a curious prevalence of Canadians of Indian ethnicity
being described as “Indo-Canadian” at some points and “Sikh” or “Hindu”
at others. I suggest the Indo-Canadian (and occasionally South Asian) label is
applied when a journalist is fearful of equating a specific religious public with
a particularly unsavory event. Headlines such as “Indo-Canadian mother
killed in Surrey” (CBC News 2007) continued to appear after three women
of Sikh descent were killed and another shot in the face in a space of four
months in British Columbia. It would appear that the hyphenated ethnic
identity is seen as being more acceptable than a religious one (i.e., Sikh-
Canadian). This could well be in response to claims of anti-Sikh coverage
leveled at news sources over the coverage of the 1985 Air India Flight 182
bombing and subsequent trial.
Patricia Spyer describes reporting in post-Suharto Indonesia wherein the
identification of victims and aggressors as Muslim or Christian was suppressed