The Revolt of 1857 altered the governance of India in more ways than one. While it transferred power from the East India Company to the British crown, it also reshaped colonial modes of knowledge and control, including more systematic efforts to document and classify the subcontinent and its people. One such initiative was the eight-volume ‘The People of India: A Series of Photographic Illustrations with Descriptive Letterpress, The Races and Tribes of India’ (1868–75)’.
Published by the India Museum in London — with descriptive letterpress and photographs by the likes of pioneering field photographers such as Benjamin Simpson, James Waterhouse and John Burke — select folios from the work form one of the highlights of the exhibition ‘Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855–1920’ being presented by DAG at Bikaner House until February 15.
The showcase features numerous colonial ethnographic photographs and photographic material related to the inhabitants of India, spanning geographies and cultures, from the northeastern Lepcha and Bhutia tribes to the Afridis of Sind in the northwest and the Todas of the Nilgiris in the south.
Among others are silver-gelatin prints by eminent photographers such as Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd, Darogha Abbas Ali, Lala Lala Deen Dayal, Edward Taurines and Hurrychand Chintamon, covering a broad time span from 1855 to 1920.
Curator Sudeshna Guha notes, “Through photographs of the colonial endeavours of typecasting the people of India, the exhibition draws attention to the construct that is a typology, or a class. It shows the uncertainties in type-making and encourages seeking a visual history of the early photography and anthropology of India beyond the colonial gaze, to reckon with the inherent mutability of photographs. For, photographs mean differently to different viewers, in different circumstances of viewing. The exhibition reminds us that photographs encourage critical reflections of the visual records of ethnographic intent.”
The different sections of the exhibition urge critical scrutiny to the histories and errors of typecasting.
Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director of DAG, says, “It could be said that the camera swiftly became the primary instrument for investigation in the field of modern anthropology, and the means by which representatives of the subcontinent’s innumerable and diverse communities were ‘captured’ in images for analysis and classification.”
“Looking back, it is obvious that this process was problematic on various levels. And the project to categorise and describe the plethora of tribes, castes and communities along regional and racial lines was a colonial enterprise, driven by British perceptions and purposes.”
So, the exhibition records a broad spectrum, ranging from the rulers to the rich Parsi and Gujarati communities as well as people from lowest-income groups such as dancing girls, coolies, barbers and snake charmers. If a 1864 Samuel Bourne silver albumen photograph has a group of Kashmiri women seated together, a 1862 Charles Shepherd photograph has a group of ‘Afredees’ at Khyber pass in Peshawar. In a 1880 Scowen & Co print Sinhalese devil dancers are seen in their elaborate customs, and a turbaned dhobi in Ambala is seen in a coloured halftone from Moorli Dhur & Sons.
While the exhibition gives a carefully framed visual overview of colonial ethnographic photography, an accompanying publication edited by Guha, with essays by professors Ranu Roychoudhuri (Ahmedabad University), Suryanandini Narain (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and independent researcher Omar Khan, delves deeper into the historical, technical and ideological conditions under which these images were produced.
A note on the exhibition reads, “Critically examining the role of photography in shaping — and questioning — social typologies in colonial India, a range of photographic material — prints, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visite, postcards, folios and albums; and also published books — displayed in this exhibition reveal how unstable social categories can be despite their role in creating them in the first place. Taken together, this material tells the history of ethnographic photography and its effect on the British administration and the Indian population.”
The different sections of the exhibition urge critical scrutiny to the histories and errors of typecasting. (express photo) 
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