Drawing (in) the margins: decolonising human rights and political frames in Indian comics on indigeneity

This article undertakes a close reading and comprehensive study of the comics ‘Without Permit, Entry Prohibited’, published as part of the anthology First Hand Volume 2 (2018), to demonstrate how this comics decolonise both various facets of conventional comics and the legacy media portrayal of the indigenous Ang community (otherwise colloquially known among the outsiders as the Jarawa people). It creates a decolonial and syncretic narrative on the lives of the Ang people, indigenous to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, offering new modes of formal stylistic and structural approaches towards character portrayal, framing recognition, silent comics, documentary comics, human rights literature, inclusion and exclusionary practices, etc. These decolonial approaches seek to reinvent a newfound method of graphic storytelling to inform urban elite audiences about the rampant human rights violations that perpetuate the narratives of social and economic development in the Andaman Islands. While aligning itself with the formulations of human rights literature and comics, it will illustrate how comics can redraw moral and sentimental attitudes towards indigenous communities in India. Ultimately, it will examine how ‘Without Permit, Entry Prohibited’ embodies a decolonised counter-comics narrative that challenges the dominant social and hierarchical discourse based on economic privileges in India, thereby creating a community/collective epistemology.