This article looks at the most popular comic book in IndiaAmar Chitra Katha (The Immortal Pictorial Book). It demonstrates the manner in which different notions of India are constructed in the series. It focuses on the regional, communal and gender identities that Amar Chitra Katha constructs through its textual and visual representations; and pays attention to the ideological subtexts underpinning the representations of gods, demons, women, kingdoms, and the nation in the comic book. It suggests that an Aryan, the upper class/caste Hindu identity, is often projected as a secular `Indian' in the series. Differences of region, language and culture are either elided or exoticised in the series. It attempts to propose other frames in which this cultural icon can be located and read.

The Amar Chitra Katha (translated as `immortal pictorial classics', and often known simply as `ACK') is perhaps India's most popular comic book series. The Amar Chitra Katha series of comic books was conceived and continues to be edited by Anant Pai of India Book House (IBH). Launched in 1967, it has sold, according to the 2004 catalog, 80 million copies of its 400 plus titles-the website www.amarchitrakatha.com announces that it sells1, 00, 000 issues every fortnight-in various languages (the 1992 catalog says `38 languages of the world'). With this kind of sales, publicity and popularity, ACK, with its comic book format, is surely one of India's prominent form of public culture of the English-educated, urban children in its towns and cities, and has assumed the status of a canon. In this article, the author looks at the ways in which ACK conceptualizes and constructs the various identities and ideals with two aspects-nation and women-of ACK's rhetoric of post-colonial India.

The stated intention of the series is described on the homepage as follows: Although initially targeted at children, the Amar Chitra Katha series also served to fill the lacuna left by grandparents in the small nuclear families in urban areas. In the olden days, grandparents would regale the children of the household with these tales from folklore and epics. Amar Chitra Katha stepped in to fill the void and gave parents and children a simple and colorful window into the past. It made the names of Shivaji and Abhimanyu, Shakuntala and Savitri, Kabir and Tulsidas as familiar as they used to be in the joint families of the past (http://www.amarchitrakatha.com Accessed on December 4, 2004).

Amar Chitra Katha and the Construction of Indian Identity, visual representations, representations of gods, demons, women, kingdoms, immortal pictorial classics, post-colonial, urban areas, India Book House (IBH), popular comic books.