Women in comics based on Indian classics

Sometime ago, while clearing my bookcase of unwanted books to make room for new ones, I came upon an entire series of comics based on Indian classics, bought for my son over fifteen years ago.  For want of anything better, I opened one of those books and started reading it.  Then I picked up another and yet another until I finished reading the entire series.  It was not just the engrossing texts and the alluring illustrations that made me read through the entire series at a single sitting but the "values" that emerged from the stories, in particular, the negative image of women that was unwittingly projected through them.

The women characters in the comics are little more than willing instruments of man's pleasure.  In Abhimanyu, there is a debate among several men about whether Uttara should be married to an elderly man or his son.  Uttara, predictably, abides by the men's decision.  In Chandralalat, when the girl who was expected to bear twins for the king fails to do so, the latter drives her out of the palace.  In Gandhari, you have yet another paragon of female virtue in the eponymous heroine, a well-known character from the Mahabharata.

Abduction of women seems to be a praiseworthy act on the part of valiant men.  In Arjuna's 12-Year Exile, the much-married Arjuna kidnaps Subhadra.  Lord Krishna asserts that the kidnapping was right.  "Which valiant man", he asks, "would wait for a maiden to be donated like an animal?"

When a woman loses either her husband or his favour, suicide seems to be the only course open to her.  Thus, in Ranak Devi, the heroine burns herself to death when her husband dies.  In Purandara Dasa, Saraswati is alarmed when she finds her nose-ring missing.  Lacking the nerve to face her husband's wrath, she rushes to her chamber to commit suicide.

I don't know whether these comics are still on the market.  If they are, and if they are read, imagine the values our young readers must be deriving from them at an impressionable age!  We ban Salmon Rushdie, but we allow books like this to be widely read by our young people.  Either there should be modern versions of these stories, or stories of this kind should be avoided in books meant for children.