Meet India's First Female Comic Book Superhero Who Fights Gender Violence

Move over Black Widow or Captian Marvel, Priya, a salwar-Kameez sporting superhero is here to save the day- and spread awareness about women-related issues. Priya is India's first comic book superhero who was gang-raped at a young age and consequently shamed by her family and community. This incident traumatised her and she prayed to Hindu goddess Parvati and the goddess gave her the strength, or "shakti", to fight criminals and help other women. Priya flies around India on a tiger, helping other victims win justice.

Image Courtesy:www.priyashakti.com

This comic was introduced to the Indian audience in December 2014, two years after the horrifying gang-rape incident in Delhi. The augmented reality comic book is created by Ram Devineni and Lina Srivastava. In an interview with BBC, Ram Devineni shared how he came up with this idea, "I was in Delhi at the time when the protests broke out and I was involved in some of them. I was talking to a police officer when he said something that I found very surprising. He said 'no good girl walks alone at night.' That's where the idea began. I realised that rape and sexual violence in India was a cultural issue, and that it was backed by patriarchy, misogyny and people's perceptions."

Target Audience

Image Courtesy:www.priyashakti.com

While talking to India and Asia's poets, philosophers, activists, sociologists etc, Ram Devineni found that women have to go through a lot to get justice."I spoke to some gang-rape survivors and they said they were discouraged by their families and communities to seek justice, they were also threatened by the rapists and their families. Even the police didn't take them seriously," he said.

He further went on saying that he wants to change this mentality and this book will sensitise children about trafficking and gender bias. "Our target audiences are children starting from 10-12 years to young adults. It's a very critical age in their lives and it's an attempt to start a conversation with them."

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Creating Awareness Through Comics

The first book of the three-part series draws attention towards the social stigma surrounding rape survivors. The second book highlighted the issue of violence against women, while the third instalment of the series which was launched last year, highlighted the sex-trafficking issue in India.

Inspire Women

According to the latest data, more than 32,500 rape cases and 1000 acid attacks cases were registered with the police in 2017. Keeping this in mind, Ram Devineni's aim was not only to showcase a black-and-white story of vanquishing evil, but also to create awareness about sensitive issues that plague women to this day and inspire rape survivors to take their stand and fight for justice.