An Indian-American filmmaker has authored a new comic book, Priya’s Shakti, which has a female rape survivor as its protagonist.
Inspired by Hindu mythological tales, the comic book tells the story of a young woman named Priya, a gang-rape survivor, and how Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati empower her and fight gender crimes in India. The comic aims to focus attention on the problem of sexual violence in India.
Creator Ram Devineni says that it was the brutal December 2012 incident, where a 23-year-old student was gang raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi, which gave him the idea. He said that he was talking to a police officer at one of the protests against the incident, who made a surprising comment saying, “good girls don’t walk alone at night,” which made him realize that rape and sexual violence is a cultural issue in India’s matriarchal society. It pained him to realise that it was the victim who faced social ostracism rather than the culprit.
In the comic too, Priya, an aspiring young woman, is blamed by her family for being raped and is banished from home, after which she takes help from Hinduism’s most powerful divine couple Shiva and Parvati, and returns on the back of a tiger to face her adversaries. Mr Devineni chose mythology, particularly Hinduism, as it is the religion more than 80 percent of the country follows, and had convinced street artists and Bollywood poster painters, in September this year, to create murals in the Mumbai area of Dharavi, Asia’s biggest slum.
The comic book also contains panels compatible with augmented reality app Blippar. Simply download the app here (available on iOS, Android and Windows mobile) and scan the panels, which then tell real-life rape survivor stories in animated form (to protect the women's identities).
The comic targets children starting from 10-12 years and young adults, and digital copies of the book have been made available to be downloaded for free, while the printed copies in Hindi and English will be available at the Mumbai Comic Con later in December.
Mr Devineni says that he hopes to create awareness and change social attitudes with this concept. You can visit the comic book's website here for more details.
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 "Mumbai Comic Con, comic books, augmented reality, gang rape, sexual violence, app")
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