Pencil power: the Indian creatives provoking change through illustration and design

Protests across the world are more visible and urgent by the day. Protesters are not only speaking out against the issues in their country that directly affect them, but are also fighting for people and against injustices in countries far away from their own – as seen in the pro-Palestine global demonstrations. Many of us are recognising that we are more connected than ever in terms of the causes we are protesting against. The fascist leaders of the world are interconnected. Policies of one country can have far-reaching consequences for many others.

This global surge in activism finds potent expression in India, where design and illustration have historically played, and continue to play, an important role.

Among the most defining protests in recent Indian history were the 2019–2020 demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) — policies widely criticised as discriminatory against Muslim citizens. The movement became a tipping point for many citizens, including the creative community. “There was an instigation of sorts – artists and creators who had been frustrated for a long time finally started speaking out. And it was broader than CAA and NRC as there were many other ongoing issues in the country, like the Trans Bill, for example,” says Mira Malhotra, founder of Studio Kohl and member of Kadak Collective – a collective of South Asian women, non-binary and queer folk who work with graphic storytelling. Kadak created Creatives Against CAA, an online repository to collate and publish posters and communication material.

“These posters became a distillation of political moments in time. Collated from a wide range of creatives, they were designed for easy dissemination; anyone could print, distribute, and carry them to protests. It was super DIY. It gave a lot of people the tools to speak out,” adds Mira.

The anti-CAA-NRC protests marked a rare convergence of physical and digital activism. Protest posters by various designers travelled seamlessly between feeds, streets, and TV screens – uniting the visual languages of dissent. Prolific artist, designer, and activist Orijit Sen highlights this unique aspect of the now iconic protest site in Delhi, Shaheen Bagh. “The site had a lot of physical protest art and paintings on the walls, which were constantly in the background of TV cameras covering the demonstrations, ensuring the local protest imagery was televised and made visible throughout the country. Then the Covid-19 pandemic struck, and the government not only dispersed the demonstrations but also completely whitewashed the protest art. That kind of protest art in a physical public space has a power that makes governments very worried. So while the protest art was still floating around in the digital space, there was a rush to make sure it was obliterated from the physical space,” says Orijit.

Orijit has been actively involved in various important causes throughout his life, one of the earliest being Narmada Bachao Andolan, which inspired his book River of Stories, India’s first ever graphic novel. He is a firm believer of protest art in the physical domain, and it’s one of the things he particularly misses in the social media age.

The pre-digital era of India has indeed seen a lot of protest imagery on the streets through printed posters, wall art, and graffiti. Leaflets and pamphlets, typically printed on letterpress, served as distribution material. Other innovative examples include how Dalit Panthers – a revolutionary organisation in the 1970s that fought against caste discrimination, modelled on Black Panthers – made use of the Little Magazine Movement to experiment in various print modes, including booklets, pamphlets, postcards, and posters. Launched in 2006, Poster Women by feminist publishing house Zubaan Books documents over 1500 posters that the women’s movement in India produced. People Tree, a store of handmade art products that Orijit co-founded, utilised t-shirts in the early 1990s as a medium for protest art – a first-of-its-kind dissemination method at the time.

Even as we have lost some of that physical manifestation, social media’s power is something Orijit has witnessed firsthand. Back in December 2010, he uploaded a poster highlighting the unjust arrest of Binayak Sen, a doctor and activist based in the Chhattisgarh region of India, on Facebook, a platform he had just begun to explore. Within two days, his poster was being printed, translated into Hindi, and used in marches in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, miles away from where he was. “That was inconceivable in the pre-social media period. It made me realise the potential of social media for creating protest art and political commentary,” he says.

While the protests show the power of rapid-response political commentary by visual artists, several of them also continue to consistently create work on issues important to them. One such artist and designer is Siddhesh Gautam, who champions the cause of the Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi (DBA) community that has been systematically discriminated against and marginalised due to the deeply entrenched caste system in India. Siddhesh’s Instagram, Bakeryprasad, has become a community archive, documenting the anti-caste movement and sparking conversations for people who might otherwise not encounter these histories.

“I often felt orphaned from history because Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi stories were erased or pushed to the margins of textbooks, archives, and museums. Even when my grandparents shared our stories, I doubted them because my school had never taught any of it,” says Siddhesh. He began doodling, writing poetry, and journaling at an early age, and eventually chose visual art and satire as his medium of expression “because they are direct, accessible, and can move between education and resistance”.

Over the years, his artworks have been used in classrooms, community events and gatherings, and public rallies. “When my work reaches communities directly and becomes a tool for representation, that’s when I feel it really makes a difference.” Siddhesh has also launched All That Blue, an independent, visually-driven magazine for creative expressions by marginalised voices across South Asia. “I want to alter the way art publishing functions in India. Who gets to be called an artist is often shaped by caste, class, and gender. I want to break that hierarchy. Art belongs to the people, and it must be returned to them – not packaged within white walls for a few,” he says.

Illustrator and designer Smish Designs’ reasons for focusing on women’s issues came from her own lived experiences as a woman in India, including growing up in a fairly conservative patriarchal system. Smish chooses to do this without revealing her name, and she made a conscious decision to slowly assert her gender over the years. “Oftentimes, people are still taken aback when they find out I’m a woman, because of gender disparity and preconceived notions about the ability of certain genders when talking about important things,” she says.

Smish has engaged in projects advocating for bodily autonomy – specifically abortion rights in the Indian context, where women still face significant challenges despite favourable laws; and period disparity, including a lack of awareness about menstrual hygiene and access to products for rural women. “My lens is guided by the participation of women in every Indian people’s movement,” she says. During the farmers’ protests in 2021, for example, she took up the cause of the visibility of women farmers and their voices in the movement.

Even for Mira, an intersectional feminist perspective informs almost all the works she creates at her studio for various politically engaged organisations, including Mariwala Health Initiative, Asia Pacific Transgender Organisation (APTN), Oxfam, Fearless Collective (that also created a mural at Shaheen Bagh), and Project 39A with National Law University. “Whether it is a project about mental health or the judicial system, it is still couched in an intersectional feminist cause – a core aspect of our work at Kadak as well. A Dalit Christian woman, for example, will face religion, caste, and gender marginalisation. Unless you centre the most marginalised, you’re just serving the interests of the privileged,” she says.

Mira consciously seeks out work related to political and social causes, along with her usual commercial projects. “We use design in so many commodified ways; why can’t we use good design to highlight important issues? The idea is not to gatekeep political and academic ideas. We want to make it so accessible and engaging that people want to be part of it and want to understand those concepts and issues, which can otherwise be complex,” she says.

As the reach of politically charged work expands, so do the risks, especially as freedom of dissent shrinks worldwide, including in India. For Smish, it has been an emotional rollercoaster dealing with both trolls and censorship; her artworks have been taken down many times by platforms like Instagram. “I have lately become careful about posting, to take care of my mental health,” she says.

Orijit sees the risks as unavoidable. “You can call it courage, and perhaps also a kind of foolishness. But despite the potential dangers – online pushback, arrest, or physical harm — you must overcome the fear. There is no point in being an artist if you cannot speak out.” He notes that pushback comes not just from authorities but sometimes also from peers and family who might be scared of potential repercussions, and that ends up creating a culture of self-censorship.

His main advice to circumvent risks as a political artist is to always ‘punch up’. “Don’t attack individuals; attack systems, authority, and oppressive powers.”

Closer Look

Payal suggest further reading, people to follow, and projects to check out:

• Read: The Art of Resistance on Scroll, and Democratising Dissent: Counter-Hegemony Through Art in India’s Citizenship Protests
  
• Follow: @srujangatha, @thebigfatbao, @sanitarypanels, @penpencildraw, @artwhoring, @tylerstreetart, @appupen, @aravaniartproject, @dalitpanthers_archive
  
• Some other creative projects that came out during/after the anti-CAA-NRC protests: Turbine Bagh, Drawing Resistance, Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh, Shaheen Bagh – A Graphic Recollection by Ita Mehrotra