Agent Rana, the eponymous protagonist of The Times of India’s graphic novel-style comic series, seems to be confronting more turbulence outside the publication’s pages than on them.

In recent months, the series has attracted criticism for ostensibly glorifying violence, perpetuating gender stereotypes and being sexually graphic. This week, it was panned for its gory depiction of the rape and murder of a female student leader. Many believe the activist character is based on Shehla Rashid Shora, former vice president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union, who came to prominence when she led protests against the arrest of fellow student leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya on sedition charges in February 2016.

Agent Rana chronicles the adventures of the titular spy who is pressed into service after information about an Indian missile programme threatens to fall into enemy hands (read Pakistan). The character that many have found to be similar to Shora was introduced on January 19 as “firebrand student leader Sameera”, spearheading an agitation against the vice chancellor of the National University in Delhi.

Sameera’s role in the comic lasted just five days: on January 24, she was raped and killed by a Pakistani agent named Timur, who had gained her confidence by pretending to be a former student. Timur hangs her from a ceiling fan, ostensibly to pass the killing off as suicide. A panel of the comic shows her body suspended from the ceiling

Soon after it appeared in the newspaper on Wednesday, this episode caused an uproar on Twitter. Many users, including journalists, politicians and authors, objected to the representation of the character.

And a bizarre, sick twist to @timesofindia's Agent Rana, with a character based on Shehla. TOI is playing out a sanghi-bhakt wet dream: rape and kill JNU 'antinationals'. Seriously sick, @vineetjaintimes pic.twitter.com/5Uuh7f3AF3 — Prasanto K Roy (@prasanto) January 24, 2018

Agent Rana sexualises Univ women students and perpetuates Islamophobia. Truly sick. But after TOI refused to take down fake news on Najeeb, not surprised. — Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) January 24, 2018

Normalisation of violence

Rashid told Scroll.in that she had been alerted to Sameera’s appearance in the series early on but did not make much of it. The Wednesday edition of the series, however, left her deeply disturbed. “Whoever this is...about me or not, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s a female student union leader, which could be me, Geeta [Kumari, the current JNU Students Union president], or anyone in the country. But that was really disturbing because there are, in any case, just a handful of us. Most people have interpreted it as being based on me, but whoever it is based on, it is very sickening.”

At best, Rashid said, the strip was tone-deaf. “After the Rohith Vemula suicide, how can they show someone with a noose around their neck on a newspaper?” she asked.

At worst, it amounted to encouraging violence. “I don’t know how Times of India could have carried it,” she said. “It’s like open incitement to rape and murder. In any case, violence is normalised in India...we have all these lynch mobs now and rape is spoken about so casually, it is often joked about, so it scares me.”

The latest edition of the comic strip, Rashid said, reminded her of the hateful propaganda that paved the way for genocides in Nazi Germany and 1990s Rwanda. In both countries, the role of media and fiction, including comics, in inciting hate has been extensively documented.

For Rashid, the newspaper needed to have shown some responsibility given the current political climate in the country and instances such as the murder of the journalist Gauri Lankesh, who is believed to have been targeted for taking a vocal anti-Hindutva stance. “After that, to have such a direct insightful depiction, you feel the danger quite close,” she said. “Anyone can see this violence and pick up on it.”

Rashid had raised similar concerns on Twitter after she first learnt of the recent plot twist.

That's Indian media preparing for genocide. Genocide almost always follows villainous caricatures/depictions in popular culture and mass media. — Shehla Rashid (@Shehla_Rashid) January 22, 2018

Agent Rana is also the subject of a change.org petition, because of its sexual content. The petition urges The Times of India to stop publishing the strip because the publication reaches many Indian households and is freely accessible to children. The petition, started four months ago by Antara Sen Dave, has garnered 44,998 supporters so far.

Can this be given to your 5-15 year olds, being groomed to read newspaper @timesofindia? #AgentRana OR is time for PG/U/UA/A certifications? pic.twitter.com/tapnROExDL — Akhil Chaturvedi (@Akhil_C) September 14, 2017

Apart from violence and sexual content, the comic’s critics have claimed that it also promotes Islamophobia and gender stereotypes, with its moustached hypermasculine and macho male protagonist and overly sexualised female leads who, for the most part, are either seductresses and manipulators and/or victims.

Added to this mix briefly was Sameera, who, as Jahnavi Sen pointed out in The Wire, seems to have been “created just for this purpose – to have her ‘modesty’ violated”. “In four sentences, accompanied by illustrations of a woman covering her face in fear and then hanging from the ceiling without any clothes on, a (completely undeveloped) female character is reduced to a pawn for some sort of inter-country enmity,” Sen wrote.

No connection

However, Sanjeev Bhargava, director, Brand TOI, said any similarity between Sameera and Shora was “merely in the imagination of the protester”.

“What is the similarity barring the fact that they are two girl students?” he asked. “Shehla Rashid, with whom they have drawn parallels, has not been victimised. She has not been targeted. She has no connection with anything. Sameera on the other hand is an innocent and well-meaning student who is trapped by the machinations of a Pakistani agent and done in by that. Where is the commonality?”

About concerns regarding the depiction of violence in the comic series, he said, “Children see television as well. Do you see programmes on television showing violence, rapes, kidnapping, of women in particular, violence against women, in particular? If that is accepted...how is a newspaper different?”

What of the risk of normalisation of violence? “Is it more violent than the kind of news shown everyday across media?” Bhargava asked. “Or the content on the internet? It’s reality. The best fiction has some connection with reality.”