Maurice Horn, the world’s first Historian of Comics, the first serious academician to study comic strips across the world and the editor of The World Encyclopedia of Comics gave the title of India’s Walt Disney to Pran Kumar Sharma, popularly known as Pran for his exemplary work in the field of story telling for children through his created comic strip characters Chacha Chaudhary, Pinki, Billu,Channi Chachi and others. Such has been the quality of his work that Chacha Chaudhary has found a permanent place at the International Museum of Cartoon Art, in the United States.
Pran, a brilliant student, completed his Masters in Political Science and then enrolled himself for a 5 year course in Fine Arts from the JJ School of Arts, Mumbai. Since he was living in Delhi and working too, he joined as a private student with distance learning. His interest in cartoons and his ability to sketch coupled with a flair for satire and wit made him take up the course even after his Post Graduation. The course helped and Pran joined ‘Milap’ a Delhi newspaper as a cartoonist and created a comic strip Daabu in the early 60s. In those days there were no indigenous comics produced in India and only the reprints of Phantom, Superman etc were available for the Indian public.
Wanting to create something meaningful all the time, Pran came up with Chacha Chaudhary in 1969. The extremely intelligent, outrageously witty, simple, humble senior citizen, a torch bearer of truth and justice from the hinterland was a massive hit with the public, particularly children for whom the character was actually designed by Pran. The super powerful Sabu, the giant from Jupiter, the voracious eater who Chacha Chaudhary raised as his son was also very popular. The ever nagging but extremely good at heart portly Chachi, wife of Chacha Chaudhary too had a fan following. The characters were so beautifully envisaged and so meticulously written by Pran, that they appeared so real and were easily relatable to the general public.
The stories told by Pran through Chacha Chaudhary were hilarious and hugely entertaining for children and they always had an underlying message for the young impressionable minds reading them. For me, this is precisely where Pran made a huge contribution to society through his writing and caricatures. His stories always spoke of the success of good over evil, the principled over the ones gone astray, the humble over the arrogant. His stories spoke of truth and justice, of helping mankind, of being respectful and good to others and of developing a healthy society.
He tried to instill in the children reading his comics a strong value system and in turn develop a robust and principled character in them. It would be apt to say that his story telling not only had fun and enjoyment, but also had huge learning in it. Pran was an incredible cartoonist and story teller who has left an indelible mark on one whole generation of the country. Pran passed away in 2014, aged 75 from Colon Cancer and was awarded the Padma Shri posthumously in 2015.
Pran has left behind a larger than life legacy which has been compared with the greats of his genre like Walt Disney. Though he is no more he shall always remain alive in our minds through the characters he created. I still love reading Chacha Chaudhary and I enjoy the same as much as I did as a kid. Let us not forget such stalwarts of our country who gave a lot back to society.
Infact, I would say ‘Walt Disney is America’s Pran’.
This is to applaud Riz Khan for his insights
in resurrecting the aura surrounding forgotten heroes in different fields of human endeavour. He is very succinctly highlighting their contributions to society. An exciting and excellent job done by Riz which merits reading and three cheers!
Very informative as well impressive 👏
thank you so much