‘Kemon Jobdo’, ‘Sochitro Bharat’ & more: Comics enthusiasts discover buried treasure

KOLKATA: Sukhalata Rao’s “Jemon Kormo Temni Fol” is generally regarded as the first comics in Bengal. Rao, the elder sister of Sukumar Ray and daughter of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, published her two-page work in 1921. However, a team of comics enthusiasts from this city has unearthed gems that predate Rao’s work. Among them is a wordless comic strip from a magazine called “Mukul” that was published in 1898.This strip is one of the main attractions of an exhibition titled “Comics in Bengal” that will be hosted at Kolkata Centre for Creativity, with Comics Culture Collective, from Feb 9.
Comics Culture Collective is a brainchild of Biswadeb Gangopadhyay, Debasis Gupta, Pinaki De, Swagata Dutta Burman and Rituparno Basu. “We all knew that Sukhalata Rao’s work in ‘Sandesh’ was the pioneer in this field. It was a pleasant surprise to find works that predate Sukhalata Rao’s comics,” Gangopadhyay said. That included a four-panel comics strip called “Kemon Jobdo” that appeared in the ‘Mouchak’ magazine some three months before Rao published her work. “Unfortunately, we have not been able to trace who designed this strip,” Gangopadhyay said.
The search also led to an understanding of the evolution of comics in Bengal. “Comics in Bengal perhaps originated to entertain children. They, in turn, were influenced by Western juvenile literature. I notice a faint Western influence in Sukhalata Rao’s work, too. Credit for ushering in Bangaliana to our comics goes to Shaila Chakraborty whose works were published in ‘Sandesh’ in 1935 to 1938,” Gangopadhyay added.
Among the other interesting finds are samples of “Sochitro Bharat” from the 1930s. These works have not been seen in circulation in the public domain since Independence. The show will also display pre-independence Bengali comic strips with political overtones. Among these is Kafi Khan’s unique take on Partition and Gandhi that was published in 1947. “There are no organised archives of comics in Bengal save for an initiative taken by Abhijit Gupta in Jadavpur University. Our collective has been passionately trying to scan through personal archives to source interesting material,” De said, while listing out interesting finds like the Boroline advertisement featuring Mahabharata in sequential format by Sudhir Moitra.
Climate change, too, is a subject that will feature in this exhibition that will showcase the Carbon Chronicles by Sarbajit Sen. “It is probably the first full-length graphic narrative on climate politics. Phillipe Squarzoni’s iconic work titled ‘Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science’ came out only in 2012, almost two years after this work was published by ‘Nagorik Mancha’,” De added.
Finally, how can an exhibition on comics from Bengal happen without ‘Bantul the Great’? So, there will be Bantul strips with the 1965 Indo-Pak War and 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War as the backdrop. The cherry on the cake is a piece of history to show that ‘Handa-Bhonda’, popularised by Narayan Debnath, was first introduced as a character by Pratul Bandyopadhyay.