Nagini Strikes Back: JK Rowling and the perils of retconning the Harry Potter universe

That JK Rowling is an unparalleled literary genius is without a sliver of doubt. The Harry Potter universe is one of the most extensive fictional realities  whose sheer depth and volume is comparable to epics like the Mahabharata or JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

It’s also an unparalleled money-minting machine. The franchise has avid fans with high-purchasing power across the globe, and they will spend any amount to relive the childhood nostalgia.  It makes the additions to the franchise a no-brainer and a mildly enjoyable ride even for hardcore fans who can’t get over the discrepancies between the books and the movies (SERIOUSLY, YOU CAN’T JUST BREAK THE ELDER WAND, HARRY).

 While it’s still understandable that one doesn’t try to kill a golden goose, what’s particularly mystifying is Rowling’s post-hoc revisionist attempts to retcon the world she had created and bolster her ‘liberal’ credentials on Twitter and the real world by adding representation in the franchise. 

Over the years we’ve got gems like how LGBT and other minority communities were represented in Hogwarts, Dumbledore was gay and then celibate, Uncle Vernon would’ve voted for Brexit and that Hermoine could’ve been black.

The latest is the addition being that Nagini, Voldemort’s pet snake and Horcrux, and the thing he only truly loved, was actually a woman, a character played by a South Korean actor.

According to Potter expanded universe, “Nagini can transform from human to snake at will, yet due to her mysterious blood curse she knows that eventually, she’ll become a snake permanently.”

While Indian fans were bemused at Rowling finally discovering one of Indian television’s favourite tropes – the shape-shifting Naagin, fans across the globe weren’t mighty pleased with this revelation.

One Twitter user perfectly articulated the anger against revisionism when she wrote: “Listen Joanne, we get it, you didn't include enough representation when you wrote the books. But suddenly making Nagini into a Korean woman is garbage. Representation as an afterthought for more woke points is not good representation.”

This led to a revisionist explainer by Rowling who again claimed that she knew about Nagini being a woman for 20 years and tried to defend the casting by stating: “The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day.”

Of course, anyone familiar with basic history in the subcontinent would know that the Nagas weren’t originally a group from Indonesia but India as Amish Tripathi, author of the Naga trilogy pointed out on Twitter: “The Naga mythology emerged from India. It travelled to Indonesia with the Indic/Hindu empires that emerged there in the early Common Era, with the influence of Indian traders and Rishis/Rishikas who travelled there. Nagin is a Sanskrit language word.”

Or to use Twitter user and blogger Arnab Ray’s earthier response which would’ve made Rita Skeeter proud: “Saying Nagas are of Indonesian origin as Ms Rowling has done is like saying Spiderman is of Indian origin because Kimi Katkar dressed up Spiderman in a Hindi movie song.”

Other Twitter users also pointed out problems with the premise - Neville Longbottom actually murdered an old woman, and a fictional dictator based on Hitler kept a POC woman as a pet and his personal plaything/slave/assassin.

As Dumbledore had explained to Harry, “I think he is perhaps as fond of her as he can be of anything. He certainly likes to keep her close and has an unusual amount of control over her, even for a Parselmouth.”

The retconning almost casts Voldemort-Nagini as being in an abusive relationship. But the greatest problem with this revisionism is that it feels more like a desperate attempt to make the wizarding world more diverse when it really wasn’t.

 JK wrote a book for white people, which despite the lack of representational, is wildly popular across races. You don’t need to be a white boy or girl to imagine yourself at Hogwarts, and this post-hoc retconning feels at best an attempt to keep Twitter conversations alive and at worst an attempt to gain liberal cred with millennials.

If Joanne Kathleen Rowling wanted to write Hermoine as black, she ought to have written her as black. The books and the illustrations and the movies make the races of every character pretty clear. Black characters are clearly earmarked as black, as Angelina Johnson was described as having a tightly-braided hairstyle, a needless stereotype of black people, which led Pansy Parkinson to mock: “Why would anyone want to look like they've got worms coming out of their head?"

There really has to be a better way to be an ally to the oppressed minorities than post-hoc retconning. No gay child is going to be happy about learning that Dumbledore was gay three months after the final book came out. In fact, he is more likely to be upset that JK Rowling vehemently hid this fact for 7 books and kept the universe as white and hetero-normative as a Republican National Convention.

Her attempts to add colour was particularly hilarious when she named Ron and Parvati’s imaginary child to be called Panju, which despite the penchant for Indian nicknames still feels ridiculous given we’ve seen nicknames like Sunny, Money, Honey but never a Panju. 

Rowling’s post-book attempts feel as disastrous as George Lucas’ foray to give a backstory in Star Wars, which is appropriately called The Prequel Trilogy.

Lucas, after creating an absolute timeless masterpiece rode slipshod on his own creations with cringe-inducing CGI and emotional angles which tarnished the original stories.

Darth Vader was no longer the most dangerous dictator in the universe but a soppy emo kid who built C3PO who murdered younglings because he didn’t get a promotion. Boba Fett, a mysterious bounty hunter was simply avenging his clone daddy. By always seeking to give meaning to actions, we run the risk of ruining the mystique.

Of course, the Harry Potter universe belongs to Rowling, and she can do what she deems fit, but this latest attempt at representation hurts, particularly for fans who can see through these shallow attempts.

 As a brown kid, I never imagined I couldn’t be Harry because he was white, but the revisionism suggests it wasn’t about me.  Harry Potter is a piece of art and this latest retcon is the literary equivalent of a Van Gogh drawing back a cut ear or Leonardo Da Vinci giving Mona Lisa a wispy moustache and claiming she was a transwoman all along. 

Pieces of art, which are universally loved, deserve to be untarnished by shallow revisionism, even by its creators.