What can be done?
Ivory tower intellectuals don’t even wish to engage in such a dialogue. They write for fellow intellectuals.
I recently wrote about the power of comic books after reading NYT editorial of January 3, 2008- “Comic Books in the Classroom”.
Looks like comic books can come handy to teach even touchy and sensitive historical topics.
Business Line February 3, 2008 reported:
“German schools will launch a comic book next week that aims to teach above all underprivileged children about the Nazi era and the Holocaust.
Although German schools already make a big effort to give pupils a thorough education about the Nazi era, racist violence remains a problem, and the revival of Germany's Jewish community has brought a rise in anti-Semitism with it.
The Tintin-style comic book is called "The Search," and tells the story of Esther, a fictional Jewish survivor of the Holocaust.
… The book, based on fact, describes how Jews in Germany and the Nazi-occupied Netherlands experienced the genocidal Nazi persecution that took the lives of 6 million European Jews.
It includes the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938, when Jews were beaten and their homes, businesses and synagogues were ransacked and, later on, the deportations to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Through pictures and realistic dialogue, the book depicts the suffering and humiliation that Jews endured as they were stripped of their livelihoods, ostracized and, finally, sent to camps to be worked to death or gassed…”.
India saw on its soil two holocausts in 20th century- the great Bengal famine of 1943 (estimated 1.5-3 million people-largely poor-dead) and the partition of 1947 (estimated 1 million people dead).
As a child I was not taught severity of either of the events. My 13-year-old son still doesn’t know enough about either of them.
So why not comic books?