A Gardener in the Wasteland JotibaPhule's Fight for Liberty: A Study of Caste in Contemporary Indian Graphic Narrative

The paper draws on contemporary graphic narrative, which focuses on caste in modern context; its aim is to understand the formation of caste and its politicization along with its contemporary interpretation. This present narrative is based on JotiraoPhule's Slavery (1873) which is a historiography of caste and its implementation. The paper makes distinction between two reformist traditions of those who carry conservative belief system and of those who do not agree with this sort of beliefs. The latter one accepted the challenge with creative imagination to crack the wall between superior and inferior, old and new, master and slave, in modern sense high caste and low caste, touchable and untouchable, in a way to produce new understanding of the history of exploitation, conflict and discrimination. It is an effect of popular culture through which the lower, oppressed and suppressed castes can raise his/her voice which has been unheard for centuries to create a new identity. This is an act of protest against the power, dominance for the socio-political, economic and cultural liberty as well. The language of the narrative and the illustration is an attempt to take this issue to national and international fronts. It is also important to look at the representation of the caste along with the culture of 'Other' with the help of various dimensions of the graphic narrative engaged in words and images.