Indian Writing

I like this short story by Vinod Joseph in Epic India, a new arts and culture magazine published by Ashok Banker. This is how it begins:

The fast passenger bus to Kottayam made an exceptional racket as it rumbled past Baby’s house at eight in the morning and woke him up. After waking up, Baby lay on his back and tried to shut out all his problems. He seemed to have exhausted all options, all avenues. Never mind, he told himself. There’s always a way. He rolled up his mattress and propped it in a corner of the veranda where he had spent the night.

Here’s an interview with Joseph in the same magazine.

There is a controversy raging over the ugly racist and colonialist stereotypes in Tintin in the Congo.

I’ve read the book (by borrowing someone else’s copy - I didn’t pay money for it) and yes, I can assure you that it is quite ghastly. Apart from all the offensive “savage natives” stuff, I remember an early scene in which a gorilla steals something of Tintin’s - I think his rifle - so the intrepid reporter calmly kills another gorilla, skins it and then wears the skin to go chasing the first gorilla. Ugh.

(And I’m told the original even had a scene where a rhinoceros gets blown up with a stick of dynamite.)

Yes, it is most certainly “old-fashioned racist claptrap”, as a representative of the Commission for Racial Equality has said. However, I don’t think banning the book is the answer. One outcome of the banning proposal has apparently been a huge increase in sales. The book was only the second in the Tintin series, originally published in 1930-31, and it’s pointless to pretend that the racism and colonialism it depicted weren’t very much representative of the times. The Congo itself was a Belgian colony during that period.

A comic book like this can actually be a powerful way of making children think about the real effects of racism, colonialism and gratuitous violence. Rather than banning it, a better idea would be an advisory printed on the first page, pointing out that the book contains offensive racist and colonialist views and scenes of violence against animals. Surely that would make children think about these issues rather than blindly accept these depictions.