Bhimayana Questions and Answers {Short} Pdf Download

 

Q. 1. What is the subject of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Bhimayana renders a serious subject – Ambedkar’s life and the experience of caste-based oppression – in a medium famous for superhero tales and fantasies. It uses episodes from Ambedkar’s Autobiographical Notes (first published in 1990). Like Sacco or Spiegelman, Anand and Natarajan, with the Vyams, also take the medium’s traditional fantasy plots and turn them, instead, to social critique.

Q. 2. How many stories are there in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability ?

Ans. Bhimayana is divided into four small chapters or ‘books’.

Q. 3. How does the the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability begin? What is the importance of such beginning?

Ans. Bhimayana unfolds in the context of a conversation at a bus stop, apparently between a Dalit woman and a caste Hindu man. The man complains about his dead-end job and blames his situation on job quotas for Backward and Scheduled Castes. This serves as a catalyst for the woman to begin narrating what is essentially the plot of the novel – various instances from the life of Ambedkar and their parallels in the modern scenario. 

Q.4. What is the title of the first chapter of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability? What does the chapter highlight?

Ans. The title of the first chapter or book of Bhimayana is Water. It highlights the pervasive presence of caste in Ambedkar’s daily life. A young Bhim could not drink from the same tap as his upper-caste classmates; furthermore, on a trip with his family, not a single person along the way gave him water for fear of being polluted. This would turn out to be the most unforgettable lesson about untouchability that he would learn. Throughout the chapter, we see excerpts from various modern news articles that show how untouchability is certainly not just a concern of the past.

Q. 5. What is the title of the second chapter of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability? What does the chapter highlight?

Ans. The title of the second chapter or book of Bhimayana is Shelter. It is premised around Ambedkar’s experiences in Baroda as an adult. He was driven out of a hotel run by a Parsi man for being a non-Parsi, and was further denied accommodation in his Hindu and Christian friends’ houses as well. These moments of transparency show us that untouchability was present even outside the Hindu social order.

Q. 6. What is the title of the third chapter of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability? What does the chapter highlight?

a Ans. The title of the third chapter or book of Bhimayana is Travel. It takes place in Chalisgaon, Nasik where Ambedkar was looking into the social boycott by caste Hindus of the Untouchables in Dhulia. On the insistence of the people, Ambedkar agreed to stay the night with them, but the journey to their neighbourhood was a rather unsteady one. The tongawallas (vehicle drivers) refused to drive Ambedkar and so his tonga had to be driven by a complete novice, leading to an accident. This taught Ambedkar that a Hindu tongawalla, menial in the eyes of caste Hindus, can look upon himself as superior to all Untouchables. It is at the end of this chapter that the initial conversation wraps up. The Hindu man admits to having a new-found respect for Ambedkar and sees why he is such an icon for Dalits today, despite still disagreeing with his ideology.

Q. 7. What is the title of the third chapter of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability? What does the chapter highlight?

 

Ans. The title of the fourth chapter or book of Bhinayana is The Art of Bhimayana. It introduces the artists and writers and gives us a sneak peek into the making of the graphic novel. We learn about the creative processes that went into the novel as well as the rationale behind them.

Q. 8. Comment on the writing style of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. The writing in Bhimayana is lucid and accessible. The historic tale of Ambedkar is seamlessly interwoven with modern examples. The text borrows heavily from contemporary news articles, a tactic which triumphs in giving the reader a solid foundation in the reality of caste. The matter is structured to retain the interest of the reader, and when combined with the artwork, we are presented with a piece of literature that is unapologetically deliberate in its narrative. a

Q. 9. Give an instance of animal symbolism in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Bhimayana is generous with its symbolism. The ecology of Pardhan Gond art is such that even when dealing with urban subjects, we see freefalling animals, birds, and trees. A thirsty young Ambedkar is visualised as a fish and happiness is depicted not through smiling faces but a dancing peacock.

Q. 10. Give an instance of symbolism of colour in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. A pervasive, though perhaps understated, symbolic value is injected in the colour blue. It is featured prominently in the novel , whether as bright blue water, or a more muted blue in the clothes of Ambedkar. This bolsters the use of the popular Ambedkarite greeting ‘neel salam’ or blue salute, which embodies Ambedkarite ideals.

Q. 11. What is the implication of the speech baloons of bird shape in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Several artistic choices throughout the novel are quite obviously politically charged. The speech bubbles that contain dialogue are of two types. One is in the shape of a bird, and it contains the dialogues of characters whose speech is soft, the lovable characters, the victims of caste’.

Q. 12. What is the implication of the speech baloons of the shape of a scorpion’s tale in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Several artistic choices throughout the novel are quite obviously politically charged. The speech bubbles that contain dialogue are of two types. The speech baloons that takes the shape of a scorpion’s tale are holding the dialogues of characters who love caste, whose words carry a sting and contain poison’.

Q. 13. Coment on the implication of thought bubbles in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Along with the speech bubbles of bird’s shape and the shape of a scorpion’s tale, a third bubble is that of the thought bubble, pictured to be stemming from the mind’s eye to contain words that cannot be heard but can be perceived. This appears to be a subtle reference to the Third eye in Buddhism, which is the inner eye or eye of wisdom. The artists incredibly infuse deep meaning into features that can be overlooked as simple aesthetic tools.

Q. 14. Coment on the implication of the image of pointing fingers in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. The novel features the image of pointing fingers throughout the narrative. One may interpret the pointing fingers as being aimed in a discriminatory fashion towards the Untouchables. A more pronounced observation, however, may be supplemented by the fact that most statues of Ambedkar erected in his honour depict him pointing forward. This could be a metaphor for progress, a collective movement towards a better, equalitarian future.

Q. 15. Which art form is used in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability? What is the significance of it?

Ans. The Pardhan-Gond art form is used in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability. Pardhan-Gond artists Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam added their own twist to the art form, by not confining their characters to boxes, creating ‘space for all to breathe’. With customary tribal patronage dwindling over the past century, tribal art has become a dying medium, and in this context, the decision to employ tribal artists to illustrate the story of an Untouchable leader becomes all the more significant:

Q. 16. Comment on the use of dignas as frame in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability.

linear sequence Ans. Instead of boxes and gutters, we have dignas, the traditional artwork of the Gond tribes. The dignas that serve here as the ‘frames’ for the story are actually the auspicious designs Gonds apply to walls and floors in their homes. This means that the story proceeds in a fluid style as the dignas crisscross the pages rather than cut them up into neat, square boxes. It suggests less a neatly compartmentalized movement than a simultaneity. One could think of the visual language of Bhimayana as a convergent design, where moments, stories and episodes sit adjacent to each other on a page but not in any at all, suggesting a mixing and merging rather than an ordering.

Q. 17. Comment how the Satara massacre is represented in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability.

Ans. Representing the Satara massacre (where a Dalit was killed for daring to dig his own well) in 2008, the visual shows a harvester machine crying, serving as a metaphor for the feeling machine and the unfeeling upper-caste humans. Ambedkar’s words function as sprinklers, energizing the lands with reviving water and freshening the people’s minds. This reconfigures the image of thirst, water and deserts from the earlier parts of the tale.

Q. 18. Who wrote the story of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Srividya Natarajan and S. Anand wrote the story of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability.

Q. 19. Who are the artists of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability?

Ans. Durgabai and Subhash Vyam are the illustrators of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability.

Q. 20. Comment on the combination of political narrative and Gond painting in the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability.

Ans. The combination of political narrative and Gond painting in Bhimayana is rinnovative and striking, but, as a graphic novel published in New Delhi in 2011, this work fits within the current context of graphic narratives that push the boundaries between folk art, the comics medium, and politically active narratives. Bhimayana is remarkable for the authors’ immersion of the story within a folk-art tradition and their crafting of a politically-engaged narrative that remains open to a diversity of audiences.

Q. 21. Give a brief introduction to second Mahad Satyagraha with reference to the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability.

Ans. In page 53 of the graphic novel Bhimayana: The Experience of Untouchability we find the mention of the second Mahad Satyagraha. It is said that on 25 Deccember 1927, 10000protesters joined the Mahad Satyagraha.Ambedkar and his followers put a copy of the “Manusmriti’, a Brahminical Hindu text that unheld the ideology of caste, on a pyre and ceremonially set it on fire . Ambedkar said this was like Indian ‘Swadeshi” nationalists burning foreign cloth to challange colonial exploitation.

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