Grassroots Comics

Invite Graphic Novel Project

Alliance Française d'Ahmedabad and National Institute of Design, organised an amazing Graphic novel week, with an exhibition of comics and talks by some amazing graphic novel/comics artists - The Godfather of Indian Graphic Novels' Orijit Sen, the contemporary Parismita Singh and the awesome comics with a cause guy Sharad Sharma.

The Graphic novel week included one evening of presentations by the above mentioned Comics Goddess and Gods.

- Parismita Singh made presentations of her upcoming comic book - The Crab Chronicles, the story of a girl and her crab friend. So looking forward to it. Her first book called 'The hotel at the end of the world" is a story that is located on the border of China.

 - Orijit Sen made presentations of some of his older works and the beautiful mural for the Punjab History museum that he is working on. The mural is to be hand painted on the walls of the museum. The height of the painting is like that of a five storey building. The painting narrates the story of Punjab, it's history and it's current situation.

-Sharad Sharma's presentation much like a TED talk was about his amazing project WORLD COMICS INDIA. 

This article is dedicated to him and his innovative Grassroots Comics. Sharad Sharma started as a political cartoonist in Rajasthan. He began to be interested in comics and their power to spread messages through the universal medium of images. He did workshops for Women Sarpanch in Rajasthan on comics and the women started their own wall journals through comic strips, he did illustrations for the Rajasthan Gram Vikas for awareness programs on social issues. He started producing political animation films for television. One thing led to another and he created WORLD COMICS INDIA, an organisation based in Delhi that does workshops on using comics to tell stories and for journalism all over the world. They have worked in many regions in India including north eastern states, in Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal, Finland, Brazil and many countries in Africa. Decentralised groups are then created in each country and region and these groups take the work forward. 

Source - WORLD COMICS INDIA website

Grassroots comics has a monthly bulletin and several other publications some of which you can download from their website here, with stories from all over the world in English, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Finnish, Portugese, Malayalam, French... made by participants of the workshops - students, women, prison inmates, children... The stories tackle everyday social issues, international politics, public health issues, women's issues, communal issues such as dowry, honour killings, Armed Forces Special Power Act (Manipur), alcoholism, girl child, domestic violence, rape, homophobia... It is a pretty awesome movement and I think he needs all the support he can get. He has now initiated a comics journalism curriculum in Delhi University.

Sharad Sharma - it is absolutely fantastic what you have started here. Attending his talk gave me a sense of how being at a TED talk would be -  goose bumps all the way, a continuous urge to stand up and applaud at his every sentence and scream 'It is movements such as these that give me hope for a better world'. BRAVO! 

Do check out the website WORLD COMICS INDIA here and download the bulletin to get a taste of the results of his work here.