In a Wider Frame

The legendary photographer who shot the fervid days of the freedom struggle had been consigned to the dustbins of history till a large show ...

The legendary photographer who shot the fervid days of the freedom struggle had been consigned to the dustbins of history till a large show encompassing his life’s work and curated by photographer Ram Rahman took place in a New York gallery in 1998. The photographs aroused considerable interest both for their historical and pictorial value and finally gave the 85-year-old Janah, based in London, his full if somewhat belated due. Following this and with an updated preface is the book on tribals.

What Margaret Bourke-White was to America Sunil Janah was to India, and the two travelled and worked together in the momentous years between 1945 and 1948. Janah’s humanist vision, as a member of the Communist Party, had by this time captured lines of emaciated people waiting for food, groups of skeletons and even a dog gnawing at the remains of human bones. He had recorded the Bengal famine of 1942 which killed two million in Bengal and then spread south, which went unreported by the British press and could be witnessed in his photographs in the ‘People’s War’. He was to go on to witness the communal riots in Calcutta in 1946 where bloated bodies lay on the street and a barbed wire fence separated Hindu and Muslim quarters.

It is interesting to note the difference in the same image taken by Bourke-White and Janah. As Vicki Goldberg stated in the New York Times while reviewing the show, “The American knew how to make monumental and memorable images, full of dignity, sorrow and a formal air of permanence: temporary images elevated to mythic stature. The Indian was frequently more informal and candid, not necessarily better or worse but wholly different in approach.”

By today’s standards, his equipment would be considered minimal — he used only a Leica camera with a few lenses and often stood by to record moments in the light of the flash used by Bourke-White. But many could learn from the fact that his work, while conveying the truth of the event, never intruded into personal tragedies. “In my judgement,” he stated, “a photograph has to be technically impeccable.” Janah’s printing technique was equally meticulous: he developed them himself where the prints were bleached, intensified and toned.

When disgusted with the machinations of power, Janah turned towards the simplicity of life lived in far-off tribal areas. Often travelling with Verrier Elwin, he photographed tribals in those candid images which record a way of life now gone forever. Indeed, the photographs go beyond the mere picture postcard variety to capture the simplicity and authenticity of their lives in a manner which eschews voyeurism. Sometimes they are able to provide genuine insights, as for instance in the case of the Murias of Central India whose young practise sexual co-habitation in ghotuls. While noting the gaiety, the abandon and the discipline with which the young boys and girls mingled, he adds, “The distinctive function of the Muria ghotul — which had first attracted the attention of ethnologists, and later, the curiosity of the world — is that it is a school for marriage. There are no restrictions on the young boys and girls sleeping together. There is no domination of one sex over the other; they have to court each other, and relationships must be based on mutual consent.”

Janah visited the Murias thrice but ended with a feeling of sadness for not only did many of them show early signs of leprosy, which they had no means of preventing, but in his last visit he found that the Raja of Bastar had banned the ghotuls for being ‘immoral’. Janah states: “The tribals had no choice but to bend to authority. However, in spite of this, the ghotul prevail and the elders are wise enough to turn a blind eye to this. The difference is that now the girls do not go to the ghotul openly, but sneak in after nightfall. What was once a joyous gathering and their birthright, has now become surreptitious, furtive and guilt-ridden.”

Janah goes to a great deal of trouble to explain his photographs of bare-breasted women and the charge of ‘glamorising’ them. In his own words: “If that meant that I found a great deal of gratification from taking the photographs, I do not need to refute that but it could imply that my objective had been to make money from these photographs, using these people for my benefit. It isn’t very uplifting for me to have to point out that the pittance paid for the publication of photographs and articles hardly ever covered the cost of the film and prints.”