“They have brushes for the buffalo and shears for the goat. They won’t trim a Mahar’s hair - they’d rather cut his throat.  

Boys at the well, even beasts at the trough, may drink till they burst. But the village turns a desert when I try to quench my thirst.”

The day I read Bhimayana I was sitting in an air-conditioned room with a cup of chai. I was working in a comfortable, well-appointed office,  feeling secure and waiting to return home and sleep on a bed I could call my own. Quite ironic. I was reading about Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s  struggles to find water, shelter, and transport, and realizing how far we’ve come because of him. If not for him, we might still be living on crumbs.

The privileged life I have today is very different from the life my father had. And his life is different from the life my grandfather had. Coming from a Dalit family from Uttar Pradesh, none of our lives have been easy. Over the years, we’ve moved from a village to a tier 3 city and then to a tier 2 city. I owe all this to my ancestors who struggled under multiple casteist regimes, and made my life a reality. It has been easier for me compared to others for sure. But I know the blade of caste hangs upon our heads to this day. 

Bhimayana represents all of this - my life, my father’s life, his father’s life, and that of everyone who comes from a marginalized caste background. The writing, the structure, the art: everything contributes to top-notch ease of reading, and captures the depth of reality.  It inspires me as an artist to make more art that resonates with people and speaks for a cause. 

Bhimayana gets its name from Ramayana, the authors write. Its  story follows the epic life of Dr. Ambedkar, fondly called Babasaheb. Their graphic novel is grounded in the difficulties he and everyone around him faced just to exist as mere human beings . The path of his life is important to know and understand because it has changed the lives of generations of Indians, not only from Dalit communities but also those from Bahujan and tribal communities, as well as of Indian women. Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam are Pardhan-Gond adivasi and Bhimayana shaped up as an intimate project for both of them. While Babasaheb’s story is often viewed through a narrow lens of caste, and he has often been marginalised as a leader solely for Dalit people, his influence on the writers and artists of this book is an instance of his profound impact on all of Indian society.

Despite this fact, and even though caste and caste atrocities still persist in our world, Babasaheb’s story is not as universally known as it should be. S. Anand writes, “Bhimayana is a small effort to address this anomaly and make Ambedkar’s story universal. If the lives and experiences of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X could resonate universally, Ambedkar’s - and those of millions of dalits in India - ought to as well. After this ‘unusually beautiful’ rendering of Bhim’s story by Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam, there can be no reason not to engage.”

The art of Bhimayana doesn’t follow an already universally-specified graphic structure. Its art is breathable and khulla – the Hindi word for ‘open’ feels most appropriate as a descriptor here - and gives the reader a new perspective and style of comic making. Not only with its writing but also with its art, Bhimayana makes you think outside the box.

All of the art is made by hand in the Pardhan Gond Art style of that indigenous community. The story’s flow is well maintained by the words of Srividya Natarajan. Durgabai and Shubhash Vyam use Digna to divide their full-page artworks into panels, instead of using Western techniques. Digna are the traditional auspicious design patterns that are applied to the walls and floors in Gond homes. 

Durgabai and Shubhash Vyam use different characteristics to convey different emotions and personalities, like - they use bird-shaped speech bubbles to indicate that the speaker is soft-spoken and lovable. They use bubbles with pointed ends to convey that the speaker is a caste-lover and that their words contain poison. One of the most striking things to me was the usage of eyes in a thought bubble. They elaborate that thinking happens with the mind’s eyes and these bubbles contain words that cannot be heard but only perceived.

I also discovered that Bhimayana’s art and design is the result of a really long process. The creators used a custom font named Bhim, which was created by Navayana’s then-intern and graphic design student Aparajita Ninan. Book 4 - The Art of Bhimayana also talks about the history and evolution of Gond art and artists, and how it developed and enabled the creation of a work like Bhimayana. 

The book highlights our connections with nature and asserts that restricting access to basic utilities is a fundamental human rights issue. It is a beautiful demonstration that climate justice and human rights are inseparable. In Book 1 - Water, the usage of fish and fish-shaped designs is a recurring pattern. Characters in this chapter have scaly skin to represent that of sea creatures. Every time Dr. Ambedkar is searching for water his character is either surrounded-by or shaped like a fish to symbolize how a fish’s life depends on water. Dr. BR Ambedkar, Ramabai Ambedkar, Jotirao Phule, and many others throughout history have fought to make the natural world free for all. 

As a Dalit artist, Bhimayana is one of those books that I would highly recommend to anyone who wants a book to relate to, and to everyone who wants to learn about our struggles. With this graphic novel, not just everyone involved in the making of it, but also readers like me hope that other readers find a haven in it and uphold the legacy of Babasaheb by uplifting lives for social equality. This would start by acknowledging your caste privilege and deconstructing the pyramid of caste in your and everyone’s mind, while simultaneously focusing on intersectionality. 

Discrimination doesn’t look the same for everyone. It does not get segmented, it compounds. When looking through a societal lens, caste is just one aspect of it. Total social equality comes when we work on different levels of marginalization, be it caste, religion, sex, gender, disabilities, etc. Babasaheb’s most famous words are also a call-to-action for us to follow - “Educate, Agitate, Organize.”

Jai Bhim!

Text and Image by Harshvardhan Bhaskar. Harshvardhan is a Queer Dalit artist who works on the themes of caste, gender, sexuality, neurodiversity, and human rights. He is currently working at the Godrej DEI Lab as a Graphic Design Intern. They hope to make spaces around them more accessible and intersectional.