Nationalism and the intangible effects of violence in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir

This essay considers how violence, especially the kind whose effect is unconscious, is represented in comic art using techniques and strategies specific to the genre by focussing on Malik Sajad’s debut graphic novel, Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir, which revolves around the protagonist’s childhood and later profession as a journalist in the conflict-ridden and disputed state of Kashmir. Through close readings of select panels, interpreted through a psychoanalytical framework, the essay demonstrates how violence is represented as a feature not only of the story, but also of the text. This, I show, collapses the narrative’s form and content, to engage the reader in a visual and tactile experience, that elicits a moral response to the issue of violence in Kashmir.