vintage large fair condition photograph of a large gun in the fort of Bidar, India , ca 1880 photographer: Lala Deen Dayal, Secunderabad, India (see stamp ) Approximate dimension: : photo: 20 x 26 cm; 8 x 10 1/2 inches
Lala Deen Dayal 1844 – 1905; famously known as Raja Deen Dayal was an Indian photographer. His career began in the mid-1870s as a commissioned photographer; eventually he set up studios in Indore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Lala Deen Dayal (Hindi: लाला दीन दयाल) 1844 – 1905; (also written as 'Din Dyal' and 'Diyal' in his early years) famously known as Raja Deen Dayal[1]) was an Indian photographer. His career began in the mid-1870s as a commissioned photographer; eventually he set up studios in Indore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. He became the court photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, Mahbub Ali Khan, Asif Jah VI, who awarded him the title Raja Bahadur Musavvir Jung Bahadur, and he was appointed as the photographer to the Viceroy of India in 1885.[2]
He received the Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1897.[3]
Contents
1 Early life and education
2 Career
3 Legacy
4 Gallery
5 Notes
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links
Early life and education
Deen Dayal was born in Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh, near Meerut in a family of jewellers. He received technical training at Thomason College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee) in 1866 as an engineer in lower subordinate class.[4]
Career
In 1866, Deen Dayal entered government service as head estimator and draughtsman in the Department of Works Secretariat Office in Indore.[5] Meanwhile, he took up photography. His first patron in Indore was Maharaja Tukoji Rao II of Indore state, who in turn introduced him to Sir Henry Daly, agent to the Governor General for Central India (1871–1881) and the founder of Daly College, who encouraged his work, along with the Maharaja himself who encouraged him to set up his studio in Indore. Soon he was getting commissions from Maharajas and the British Raj.[4] The following year he was commissioned to photograph the governor general's tour of Central India.[6] In 1868, Deen Dayal founded his studio – Lala Deen Dayal & Sons – and was subsequently commissioned to photograph temples and palaces of India.[6] He established studios in Indore (Mid 1870s), Secunderabad (1886) and Bombay (1896).[7]
In 1875–76, Deen Dayal photographed the Royal Tour of the Prince and Princess of Wales.[5] In the early 1880s he travelled with Sir Lepel Griffin through Bundelkhand, photographing the ancient architecture of the region.[8] Griffin commissioned him to do archaeological photographs: The result was a portfolio of 86 photographs, known as "Famous Monuments of Central India".[9]
The next year he retired from government service and concentrated on his career as a professional photographer. Deen Dayal became the court photographer to the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad in 1885. Soon afterward he moved from Indore to Hyderabad.[9] In the same year he was appointed as the photographer to the Viceroy of India.[10] In time, the Nizam of Hyderabad conferred the honorary title of Raja upon him. It was at this time that Dayal created the firm Raja Deen Dayal & Sons in Hyderabad.[10]
Deen Dayal was appointed photographer to Queen Victoria in 1897.[10]
In 1905–1906, Raja Deen Dayal accompanied the Royal Tour of the Prince and Princess of Wales.[10]
Legacy
Lala Deen Dayal on a 2006 stamp of India
The Lala Deen Dayal studios' collection of 2,857 glass plate negatives was bought by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi in 1989. Today it is the largest repository of his work. A large collection including celebrated images of the 1870s' famine are with the Peabody Essex Museum, US and the Alkazi collection in Delhi. In 2010, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at IGNCA, curated by Jyotindra Jain.[11][12]
In 2006, a curated collection of Raja Deen Dayal's photographs was exhibited at the Salar Jung Museum during the Times Hyderabad Festival;[13] subsequently in November, the Ministry of Communications, Department of Posts released a commemorative stamp honouring him; the ceremony was held at Jubilee Hall, Hyderabad.[3]
Gallery
Photographs taken by Deen Dayal in the 1880s, sourced from the British Library, George Curzon's Collection: Views of HH the Nizam's Dominions, Hyderabad, Deccan, 1892.
Purana Pul, Hyderabad
Bashir Bagh Palace, Hyderabad
The interior of the Basir-bagh Palace
Drawing Room of Chowmahalla Palace, Hyderabad
A distant view of the Falaknuma Palace from an opposite hillside, taken by in the 1880s
Rashtrapati Nilayam, Hyderabad, then Residency House circa 1892
I AM back to photography in this column, but this time the photographer is a celebrated Indian, and the age in which he lived ended a hundred years ago. Narendra Luther’s recent book, Raja Deen Dayal: Prince of Photographers, provides me with the occasion.
There is an aura that has come to be attached to this name. Every book on early Indian photography speaks of Deen Dayal; the title of ‘Raja’ that he carried — conferred upon him by the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad in 1895 — ensures that he is seen as being a cut above others of his times; exhibitions dedicated to his work continue to draw crowds even today; collectors and aficionados keep looking for his signatures. And, by any count, Deen Dayal’s is an extraordinary success story. Few could have foretold that this man — a Jain by birth, born in the small town of Sardanah near Meerut, not connected through family with an interest in the arts of any kind — would come to be regarded one day as the foremost photographer of India, receive a warrant of appointment from Queen-Empress Victoria, herself, be sought after by princes and nobles all over the land. Having honed his skills as a ‘picture-maker’, and endowed with a shrewd business sense, Deen Dayal founded studios in different cities — Secunderabad, Bombay, Madras, Indore, among others — that came to acquire the prestige of a brand name. India of those colonial times, with the English presence so palpable, was home to many a European photographer and photographic firm, including the renowned Bourne & Shepherd of Calcutta and Simla, and Johnston & Hoffmann. But whose photographs of that most glittering spectacle, the Delhi Durbar of 1903, does one remember and admire? Raja Deen Dayal’s, of course.
EARLIER COLUMNS
The curling roots of time
January 25, 2004
Looking at medicine through art
January 11, 2004
The uncertain world of valuation
December 14, 2003
Seasons of longing
November 16, 2003
Greed in the land of antiques
November 2, 2003
Of elegant walks & sculpted silks
October 19, 2003
Pattern-drawers of Benares
October 5, 2003
Kaghaz ki kahani
September 21, 2003
The rains in poetry and painting
September 7, 2003
The way of the brush
August 24, 2003
Portrait of a Hyderabad noble, Rai Lakshmanraj, by Deen Dayal
Portrait of a Hyderabad noble, Rai Lakshmanraj, by Deen Dayal
Narendra Luther tells the story well, and intelligibly. Walking the reader first through the history of photography in the West and its early appearance in India, and establishing the texture of those colonial times with its swaggering sahibs and hardworking bureaucrats, he comes to Hyderabad where Deen Dayal came to settle down and won the esteem, almost the affection, of the then Nizam, Mehboob Ali Khan. One sees a graph of the Raja’s career also through his photographs that keep company to the text: the early interest in photographing monuments and abandoned sites that brought him to the notice of men like Lepel Griffin and more than one Viceroy and Governor; an exploration of the life and times of the princes and people of Hyderabad, and so on. We do not get to know much about the kind of equipment that he used and kept adding to, or any new insights into the techniques he developed. But there are all those lavish, and crisp, images of rulers and their guests ranged along unendingly long dining tables, hunters posing with their proud feet planted upon dead tigers, monumental calligraphy in Kufic and Naskh on the walls of the Moti Masjid, the Maharaja of Rewa’s opulent carriage drawn by two elephants in the procession at the Delhi Durbar, wild-looking Rajput chiefs with eyes that look dazed by the change that has come over times, young princesses primly reclining on couches.
Along the way one learns something of the business practices — and acumen — of Raja Deen Dayal himself. There is that story of how the photographer decided to engage as an assistant an Englishwoman exclusively for taking pictures of high-born women in the zenanas of royal palaces, and advertised this fact widely. Also the story of how the Raja would pick up cotton swabs dipped in a favoured ittar that the Nizam used to throw after use, and then dab the backs of his pictures before presenting them to the Nizam. This elicited the remark: "It is remarkable, Deen Dayal. You are able to bring out even my ittar in my picture!" I also found fascinating the idea of reproducing a sheet that the photographer and his assistants used to hand over to potential customers, containing ‘Hints to sitters’. Among them: "The following colours for costumes are the best to be photographed in — cream, light greys, and light tints generally. Dead blacks and whites are not so good. Dark reds and browns, heavy greens and yellows come out nearly the same as blacks." And the USP of the studio: "Although babies and children often occasion much trouble and require a large number of plates, we make no extra charge.
The book is rich in photographs. But what the reader might find a bit confusing is how photographs taken by Deen Dayal, and those taken before his times or after, all mingle and jostle against one another, with no clear guide provided to authorship. I wish that the photographs had all been of even quality, at least even sharpness. The fuzz and the grain that second or third generation reproductions often acquire cast a less than fair light upon the originals.
Brush & the lens
In the end, a word about the epigraph with which Narendra Luther’s engaging book opens: a couplet in Urdu that the sixth Nizam himself composed in honour of the photographer. As it is reproduced, it reads: "Ajab yeh karte hain tasvir men kamaal kamaal/Ustadon ke hain ustad Raja Deen Dayal" (In the art of photography, surpassing all,/A master of masters is Raja Deen Dayal.)" As far as I know, the original, at least according to the Farhang-I Asifiya, read: "Ajab yeh karte hain tasvir mein kamaal kamaal/musavviron ke hain ustad Lala Deen Dayal". I point this out not only because "ustadon" in the couplet as cited does not fit into the metre, producing a sakta as Urdu knowers would say, but because replacing the word musavviron (painters) with ustadon (masters) robs the couplet of the fine reference to the comparative arts of painting and photography. What the Nizam said was that this gifted photographer is far ahead of the painters, and can teach them a thing or two! Which he could perhaps, given the state to which painting had been reduced by that time.
The Ministry of Communications, Department of Posts released a commemorative stamp in honour of pioneering Indian photographer Lala Deen Dayal at Jubilee Hall here on Saturday.
Chief Post Master General, Andhra Pradesh Circle, Yesodhara Menon released the stamp in the presence of Union Minister of State for Mines T. Subbarami Reddy and Member of Parliament Gireesh Kumar Sanghi.
Sheer brilliance
Addressing the gathering, the Minister said Lala Deen Dayal captured varied images with his sheer brilliance and opined that even in this digital age many photographers could not match Deen Dayal's ability.
A special audio-visual presentation was also organised by the Dayal family members depicting the collections of Lala Deen Dayal's works during the pre-eminent 19th century.
Later, Mr. Sanghi congratulated the Ministry of Communications for releasing a stamp in memory of Lala Deen Dayal, who received the Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1897.
The doyen of Indian Photographers, Raja Deen Dayal was born in 1844 at Sardhana in Meerut in United Provinces. He received technical education at Thomason Civil Engineering College in Roorkee after which he joined as head estimator and draftsmen in the Public Works Department at Indore. The ruler of Indore, Maharaja Tukoji II, encouraged him to set up his studio there.
The studio of Raja Deen Dayal and Sons, Secunderabad, 1890.
Sir Henry Daly the Agent to the Governor General encouraged him. According to his Memoirs he was thus able to obtain the patronage of Lord North brook the Governor General of India in 1874.
He accompanied Sir Lepel Griffin in his central India tour during which he photographed views of Gwalior, Khajraho and other sites in Central India.
In 1896 he expanded his business and opened the largest photography studio in Bombay, which was patronized by the Indians as well as the British. The Nizam visited his studio at Bombay and invited him to Hyderabad. He established a Photographic Studio in Secunderabad. The Nizam Mahaboob Ali Pasha, Nizam VI was photographed by Raja Deen Dayal during his Shikars/Wedding Ceremonies, visits by foreign royalty. The Nizam of Hyderabad conferred of him the Title of Raja Musavir Jung Bahadur and a Mansab.
Raja Deen Dayal (seated in the front row, centre) surrounded by the employees of the Secunderabad Studio, 1895.
Raja Deendayal had two sons Gyanchand and Dharamchand assisting him. Dharmchand died in 1904 and this was a grievous loss to him.
Besides the Nizam, Raja Deen Dayal photographed various British, Military exercises, the visit of King George V, then Prince of Wales. He also accompanied the Nizam VI to Delhi for the Durbar in 1903.
He was honored in 1885 by Lord Dufferin and appointed official photographer to the Viceroy and also to successive viceroys like Earl Elgin and Duke of Connaught. He had a unique honor of being appointed as “Photographer to Her Majesty and Queen” by Queen Victoria in 1887. He received numerous awards in exhibitions in India and abroad notable the World Colombian Commission in 1893 in USA.
He passed away on 5th July 1905.
His son Gyan Chand continued his work in Hyderabad studio and subsequently his sons Trilok Chand, Hukum Chand and Ami Chand continued the business in Hyderabad.
Lala Deen Dayal (also written as 'Din Dyal' and 'Diyal' in his early years) was born at Sardhana near Meerut in 1844. He studied at the reputed Thomson College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee (now IIT, Roorkee) and graduated at the top of his class scoring 258 out of a maximum of 260 marks. In 1866 he became an estimator and draughtsman in the Department of Public Works Secretariat office in Indore. During the course of his job he developed a keen interest in photography and was encouraged by Sir Henry Daly, the Agent to the Governor General for Central India.
In 1874 he photographed the Viceroy Lord Northbrook, and in the following year 1875-76, he photographed the royal visit of the Prince of Wales. Impressed by his talent, Sir Henry took Deen Dayal along with him on his tour of Bundelkhand.
In 1882-83 Deen Dayal again toured Bundelkhand with Sir Lepel Griffin who was then the Agent. His photographs of palaces, forts and temples in Gwalior, Khajuraho, Rewa and Sanchi were splendidly reproduced by the Autotype carbon process in Sir Lepel Griffin's book Famous Monuments of Central India (London 1886). He subsequently took a two year furlough from his official duties in order to concentrate on completing a series of views. Meanwhile he had opened studios in Indore ( around 1874), Secunderabad (around 1886-87) and Bombay in 1896. He sought retirement from the PWD in March 1887 and by then had been the Head Draftsman and Estimator for many years.
By far his most wealthy and flamboyant patron was Mahbub Ali Khan the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, who appointed him the court photographer in 1894 and anointed him with the title of Raja Bahadur Musavir Jung. Similar appointments by a number of Viceroys followed culminating with the royal appointment to Queen Victoria in 1897
Pages from Deen Dayal's Views Catalogue
Over 50 people were employed in the three branches and part of the business was supervised by Deen Dayal's two sons Gyan Chand (1867- d.1919) and Dharam Chand (1869-d.1904). In 1892 he opened a Zenana studio, probably the first in India at the Secunderabad studio. Deen Dayal breathed his last in July 1905 preceded by the untimely demise of his wife a couple of months earlier. The mantle of running the firm was taken up by the able hands of Gyan Chand and he continued to do till his death.
Raja Deen Dayal – The Studio Archives from the IGNCA collection, is a show that opened on Indira Gandhi's birthday in a new gallery space at the IGNCA in Delhi. As one entered the premises large sepia blow-ups of Deen Dayal's work were framed against old trees lit warmly on the campus. The cultural archives of the IGNCA in a significantly prescient move had acquired, in 1989, the collection of near 2900 glass plate negatives and other objects from the family of Raja Deen Dayal such as studio props, cameras, lenses and studio registers. There are 220 images from these negatives, which are digital reproductions of bromide silver photographs, which were produced after the selected images were cleaned and colour corrected to present them in a condition closest to the original, in a splendid exhibition curated by Dr.Jyotindra Jain and Pramod Kumar K.G.
Early days
Born into a Jain family of Sardhana, near Meerut, Deen Dayal rose from being a civil engineer at the Indore Public Works Department after completing his studies and spending sometime there as a head estimator and draftsman. When he began to take photographs, he came to the attention of the Maharaja of Indore, Tukoji Rao II and soon opened his studio there with commissions from the Maharaja and the British. Sir Lepel Griffin of the Bengal Civil Service commissioned him to do archaeological photographs and he created a portfolio of 86 photographs that were known as ‘Famous Monuments of Central India'. From 1885 he worked as a photographer at the court of the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad where he established a base and his family continued the studios after him with the seventh Nizam as well. Branches in Bombay and Indore were run by his sons as well and today in Hyderabad descendants continue to run the studio.
Dr. Jyotindra Jain, an authority on popular culture and well known for his setting up of the Crafts Museum in Delhi, says in his curator's note: “One of the criteria kept in mind while selecting images for the exhibition was that each image reflected a certain degree of aesthetic, subjective, performative or ‘double entendre' layering, evoking the Deen Dayal essence. Typical of Raja Deen Dayal's ethos, which is reflected in his collective body of work, is that he was primarily a patron's and a commissioner's photographer whose aesthetic conceptualisations balanced between his fine photographic vision and the performative dispositions of his clients/subjects”.
The exhibition has been arranged in chronological and thematic loops starting with his work of early architectural wonders, then going to his time in Hyderabad and after that his commissions of royalty across India as well as studio portraits and ethnographic studies. The excellent exhibition design and accompanying catalogue done by the Vivek Sahni Studio are a great enhancer to the absorption of the visuals in one's mind's eye. At the entrance is a large blown up image of the fountains in front of Gopal Bhavan palace in Deeg Rajasthan. Here water bodies cooled the royalty in the summer months and pleasure pavilions were planned around that. In this image is the arch for a swing or “ hindola” believed to have belonged to Shah Jahan. The visual allows you with a blink of an eye to imagine princes and princess cavorting at dusk as cool breezes brought in the fragrances of the gardens at hand.
Pramod Kumar K.G. says in his curator's comment: “Most of the photographs in this series show views of historical monuments with some sites photographed from two or more vantage positions. In Deen Dayal's set manner of photographing monuments, these structures are seen in the middle of the frame against the clear sky, the foreground showing empty space or water. Most of these sites have changed dramatically over the years and some no longer exist.” In his times with the Nizam he not only photographed him but also his close friends, courtiers and those in the Zenana. An interesting photograph that reveals the openness and broadmindedness of one of the Nizam's close confidantes is a family portrait of Sir Afzar Jung Bahadur, the ADC and commander of the Hyderabad army, along with his family. The painted backdrop and props indicate that it was taken at the Deen Dayal Studios, and unusually, for a Muslim nobleman's family in the late nineteenth century, posed in western clothes. Visible here is the use of wax around the heads of the sitters to enhance the same in the print by increasing the contrast of the negative.
Part of the ceremony of the Raj besides the durbars and show of pomp and pageantry for visiting royalty and the British were the ‘Shikhars' or hunts. What may be seen as politically incorrect now was par for the course and the ‘Shikhar' photographs have many visuals of a relaxed camaraderie amongst the closer group of the Nizam with strict court hierarchy loosened in the camp. However one monumental and somewhat strange picture is of the Nizam with a tableaux of stretched carcass skins over a wall with the Nizam in the margins but a board proclaiming him as ‘The Royal Champion Crackshot'. As a practising Jain, Deen Dayal must have been conflicted over shooting this particular photograph.
Sir Afzar Jung and family, Hyderabad, c. 1890, taken at the Deen Dayal Studio;
The fact that the family stayed in touch for over two decades after the passing away of the sixth Nizam shows how deeply entrenched they were at the Hyderabad Court. A picture of the two sons of the Seventh Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan shows Prince Azam and Muazzam Jah. Here one can see the royal children have had the studio come to the palace in all likelihood. The sitters remind one of the twins in Harry Potter's Hogwart's school. Stuffed and spoilt and ready for food and slumber, miniature minions of sloth!
Dual gaze
One of the earliest patrons of Deen Dayal was the Maharaja of Dhar — in an extremely simple but unusual photograph Maharaja Anand Rao Pur III of Dhar is shown holding his nephew and successor with an attendant standing slightly apart, maintaining court hierarchy. It is interesting to note that royalty gazes at the camera and the attendant is looking somewhere else.
Speaking of the gaze, these photographs were ordered by many; royalty autographed some while heritage buildings were snapped up in folios by travellers, and those of ethnographic accounts as well. As Jyotindra Jain says, “The mise en scene for “performing” these receptions and darbars were the palaces, especially Chowmohalla and Falaknuma, with their spectacular halls decked with ornate ceilings, glittering chandeliers and mirrors, exuberant curtains and drapery, luxurious carpets and plenteous colonial furniture. That Deen Dayal had to engage with and capture a dual gaze – his own as photographer and the Nizam's as performer and onlooker of his own performance – becomes evident from his pictures of the palace interiors: they are construed as spaces awaiting a performance even after it has already begun. It comes as no surprise, then, that later historians of colonial India often used the phrase “performing a darbar” rather than “holding a darbar”.
Gopal Bhavan Palace, Deegh, c.1880-85.
In some ways the photograph of the Cenotaph of Sangram Singh of Ahar, Mewar with its large rising staircase blown up at the entrance is a metaphor for what the IGNCA could become — a mausoleum of archives of its collections. It is to the credit of its management's energy that this revival has allowed for infusing a dynamic life to the collections and environs and populating the space with as many visitors as birds who were setting in at dusk in the large banyan and peepul trees on the premises. Not only for the archives to be seen but also the voices of important curators like Dr.Jyotindra Jain and Pramod Kumar K.G. to be heard so that the bulk of the archives make a continuum with our present lived realities and contexts. This is an effort and a show to be enjoyed, visited and applauded.
It is a world we'll never see again. The ethos of an age gone by comes alive in the collection of Raja Deen Dayal's photographs, carefully curated and exhibited at the Salar Jung Museum by The Times of India as part of its Times Hyderabad Festival.
The exhibition, which began on Tuesday, captures the rich texture of the city's Asaf Jahi days, with images of stately banquets, gilded durbars, polo matches, viceregal visits bespeaking of the famed hospitality of the Nizams.
For a modern contrast, the exhibition also serves up a collection of images from The Times of India's archives, shot by its photographer P Ramoorthy.
The exhibition gives a gripping narration of the life and style of Hyderabad over the last 150 years: from the pictures of demure princesses at state banquets to images of today's Old City schoolgirls doing a perfect 180 degree split as they practice martial arts, the exhibition runs a narrative skein of change and continuity.
It is a delight to see the Hussain Sagar at its natural best as it was in 1892, Lord and Lady Curzon posing with their 'trophies' after a hunting expedition during their visit to Hyderabad in 1902, Bella Vista brightly lit up for the silver jubilee of H.E.H the Nizam, the garden party at Baradari during the visit of Lord and Lady Willingdon to Hyderabad in 1933. All tell the story of an opulent city as a prince would have seen it.
The exhibition is also a narrative of change. The grand Charminar and alongside it the utilitarian Hi-Tec City together plot the extremities of Hyderabad's journey from being a city of princely splendour to a metropolis of oligarchic enterprise.
While Raja Deen Dayal's pictures of inner-palace billiards tables throw light on the dainty pastimes of the past, the picture of Sania Mirza, the sparkling nose ring and the careless lock on her forehead, speaks of the pluck and sass of today's youngster.
Like in any creative pursuit, the attraction of the exhibition is the painter himself-his persona, his perceptions, the insight into his mind, what it was that he thought was worthy enough of being captured for posterity and what not.
Raja Deen Dayal draws a picture of his time-lavish palatial interiors, royal pavilions, glistening chandeliers, rich garden parties, lords and ladies.
The princes are absent in today's pictures. The common man is the hero. That in sum is the story of Hyderabad.
It began with the splendid exhibition titled The Waterhouse Albums at the Triveni Kala Sangam in Delhi in January,and seems to have peaked with Raja Deen Dayal,a mini-retrospective of the pioneer photographer at the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts,(IGNCA). 2010 seems to be the year for sepia-tinted photographs from the1850s to the late 1900s,and this revival of the past is too systematic to be a coincidence. One could reason that it is perhaps the result of years of perseverance by the curators,to preserve,restore and present images from our collective past.
Photography was brought to India by the East India Company,in the 1850s,as a surveillance tool. Portraits of the natives were historical documents and a source of information for those who wish to know more about the people we have taken on to guide and govern, wrote John Falconer,currently at the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library,London. Bourne and Shepherd,Johnston and Hoffman,Collin Murray,G. W Lawrie and Raja Deen Dayal left behind a great body of photography that documents these times. There were also several unknown photographers whose work has been showcased in various archives.
These were not innocuous photographs but documents of conquest,much like what one observed in Company School paintings executed by the likes of the Daniel brothers before the advent of photography. In the same manner that Raja Ravi Varma learnt oil painting from Theodore Jansen,Raja Deen Dayal became the first native photographer to learn the craft of making images in a scientific manner. However,like Ravi Varma,Deen Dayal followed many of the methods and trends practised by the British photographers.
In the postmodern context,artists like the Delhi-based Pushpamala N. have devoted their entire oeuvre to critiquing and masquerading around some of these colonial images. In her book Native Women of South India,Pushpamala presents us with a collection of images that document her enactments of the various tropes perpetuated by early painters and photographers following the Company School style. We see her posing as Ravi Varmas muse,a damsel by the edge of a river,or as a Toda tribal woman,and as a divinity,Lakshmi,atop a lotus in a style reminiscent of the kitschy calendar art that Ravi Varmas followers carried on. These images are playfully tongue-in-cheek,and bring home the stereotypes perpetuated by male artists working in pre-modern era.
While Pushpamalas critical position is vital for understanding and repositioning ones view of our past,the reacquisition,presentation and preservation of the original albums of the 1800s is also a vital act a way of reclaiming the past for oneself and making peace with it. Vintage prints are also important because they document social and political life in the subcontinent,through the interdisciplinary fields of architecture,anthropology,topography and archaeology starting from the 1850s,and leading up to the rise of modern India and the independence movement.
For instance,the Waterhouses collection,part of Alkazis archive,contains rare portraits of Begum Sikandar and even rarer images of the four begums of Bhopal in one frame. The young army officer was also a photography enthusiast and spent months at the royal court of Bhopal. The civil surgeon John Nicholas Tressiders album that is also part of the Alkazi Foundation uncovered some shocking and interesting facts. For instance,the works of the Italian Felice Beato (1834-c.1907),also known as the first war photographer,because of his images of the Crimean War,engages in India in a large venture to record all the significant sites affected by the ravages of the 1857 mutiny. The images were intended to illustrate the landscapes of a decaying dynasty,which were fading away under the onslaught of the British victory. Certain sites,therefore,achieved iconic status through repeated representations that drew on memories of siege: Kashmere Gate in Delhi,the Residency complex in Lucknow and the Sati Chowra Ghat in Kanpur.
One of the most controversial and noteworthy photographs taken by Beato is a large print of an array of skeletons scattered in front of a Grecian-looking building. This image was a reconstruction that Beato achieved by literally exhuming bodies from their graves and then scattering their bones around. By evoking these memories of past brutality,they recreated for the colonisers a moment of catastrophe,but a triumph nonetheless.
When we look at these images today,we realise that the line between documentary and fiction was blurred long before the advent of Photoshop. Sitters could be made to look better or more beautiful through clever positioning before the lens to exploit their best angle before camera. Histories could be re-enacted,backgrounds were painted in and montages were created through double exposure plates. Exhuming our past prompts the question: have we changed all that much?
Lala Raja Deen Dayal, pioneer Indian 19th century photographer(1844-1905). has left for us an exquisite photographic record of British India, of a bygone Colonial era influenced by Native Princely India- its picturesque opulence, rich costumes, whiskered nobility, hookah bearers, royal palaces, hunts, and parades, elephant carriages, historic events - golden moments captured on "silver" plates for posterity
Lala Deen Dayal
It was not only in his portraitures and "sovereign scenarios" that Lala Deen Dayal excelled. His lens captured the culture and tradition of India's rich architectural heritage, temples, monuments, forts, views, and memorials. His extensive series of Indian views forms a timeless travelogue of the country.
A unique repertoire of the excellence of Black and White photography, with early techniques, processes and equipment which produced living images and left its impact on the history of art and printing.
लाला दीन दयाल
India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: Bhārat Gaṇarājya),[25] is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country as of June 1, 2023;[26][27] and from the time of its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy.[28][29][30] Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;[j] China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia.
Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.[31][32][33] Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity.[34] Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.[35] By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest.[36][37] Its evidence today is found in the hymns of the Rigveda. Preserved by an oral tradition that was resolutely vigilant, the Rigveda records the dawning of Hinduism in India.[38] The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions.[39] By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism,[40] and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.[41] Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin.[42] Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity,[43] but also marked by the declining status of women,[44] and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief.[k][45] In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.[46]
In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts.[47] Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains,[48] eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.[49] In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India.[50] In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion.[51] The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace,[52] leaving a legacy of luminous architecture.[l][53] Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty.[54] British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly,[55][56] but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root.[57] A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule.[58][59] In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions,[60][61][62][63] a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration.[64]
India has been a federal republic since 1950, governed through a democratic parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society. India's population grew from 361 million in 1951 to almost 1.4 billion in 2022.[65] During the same time, its nominal per capita income increased from US$64 annually to US$2,601, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. From being a comparatively destitute country in 1951,[66] India has become a fast-growing major economy and a hub for information technology services, with an expanding middle class.[67] It has a space programme. Indian movies, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture.[68] India has substantially reduced its rate of poverty, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality.[69] India is a nuclear-weapon state, which ranks high in military expenditure. It has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and China, unresolved since the mid-20th century.[70] Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are gender inequality, child malnutrition,[71] and rising levels of air pollution.[72] India's land is megadiverse, with four biodiversity hotspots.[73] Its forest cover comprises 21.7% of its area.[74] India's wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in India's culture,[75] is supported among these forests, and elsewhere, in protected habitats.
Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (third edition 2009), the name "India" is derived from the Classical Latin India, a reference to South Asia and an uncertain region to its east; and in turn derived successively from: Hellenistic Greek India ( Ἰνδία); ancient Greek Indos ( Ἰνδός); Old Persian Hindush, an eastern province of the Achaemenid Empire; and ultimately its cognate, the Sanskrit Sindhu, or "river," specifically the Indus River and, by implication, its well-settled southern basin.[76][77] The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi (Ἰνδοί), which translates as "The people of the Indus".[78]
The term Bharat (Bhārat; pronounced [ˈbʱaːɾət] (listen)), mentioned in both Indian epic poetry and the Constitution of India,[79][80] is used in its variations by many Indian languages. A modern rendering of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which applied originally to North India,[81][82] Bharat gained increased currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India.[79][83]
Hindustan ([ɦɪndʊˈstaːn] (listen)) is a Middle Persian name for India that became popular by the 13th century,[84] and was used widely since the era of Mughal Empire. The meaning of Hindustan has varied, referring to a region encompassing present-day northern India and Pakistan or to India in its near entirety.[79][83][85]
History
Main articles: History of India and History of the Republic of India
Ancient India
Manuscript illustration, c. 1650, of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, composed in story-telling fashion c. 400 BCE – c. 300 CE[86]
By 55,000 years ago, the first modern humans, or Homo sapiens, had arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa, where they had earlier evolved.[31][32][33] The earliest known modern human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago.[31] After 6500 BCE, evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, and storage of agricultural surplus appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in Balochistan, Pakistan.[87] These gradually developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation,[88][87] the first urban culture in South Asia,[89] which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in Pakistan and western India.[90] Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Dholavira, and Kalibangan, and relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilisation engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade.[89]
During the period 2000–500 BCE, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones.[91] The Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism,[92] were composed during this period,[93] and historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.[91] Most historians also consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west.[92] The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labelling their occupations impure, arose during this period.[94] On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation.[91] In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period,[95] as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, and craft traditions.[95]
Cave 26 of the rock-cut Ajanta Caves
In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas.[96][97] The emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of its exemplar, Mahavira.[98] Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle class; chronicling the life of the Buddha was central to the beginnings of recorded history in India.[99][100][101] In an age of increasing urban wealth, both religions held up renunciation as an ideal,[102] and both established long-lasting monastic traditions. Politically, by the 3rd century BCE, the kingdom of Magadha had annexed or reduced other states to emerge as the Mauryan Empire.[103] The empire was once thought to have controlled most of the subcontinent except the far south, but its core regions are now thought to have been separated by large autonomous areas.[104][105] The Mauryan kings are known as much for their empire-building and determined management of public life as for Ashoka's renunciation of militarism and far-flung advocacy of the Buddhist dhamma.[106][107]
The Sangam literature of the Tamil language reveals that, between 200 BCE and 200 CE, the southern peninsula was ruled by the Cheras, the Cholas, and the Pandyas, dynasties that traded extensively with the Roman Empire and with West and Southeast Asia.[108][109] In North India, Hinduism asserted patriarchal control within the family, leading to increased subordination of women.[110][103] By the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire had created a complex system of administration and taxation in the greater Ganges Plain; this system became a model for later Indian kingdoms.[111][112] Under the Guptas, a renewed Hinduism based on devotion, rather than the management of ritual, began to assert itself.[113] This renewal was reflected in a flowering of sculpture and architecture, which found patrons among an urban elite.[112] Classical Sanskrit literature flowered as well, and Indian science, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics made significant advances.[112]
Medieval India
Brihadeshwara temple, Thanjavur, completed in 1010 CE
The Qutub Minar, 73 m (240 ft) tall, completed by the Sultan of Delhi, Iltutmish
The Indian early medieval age, from 600 to 1200 CE, is defined by regional kingdoms and cultural diversity.[114] When Harsha of Kannauj, who ruled much of the Indo-Gangetic Plain from 606 to 647 CE, attempted to expand southwards, he was defeated by the Chalukya ruler of the Deccan.[115] When his successor attempted to expand eastwards, he was defeated by the Pala king of Bengal.[115] When the Chalukyas attempted to expand southwards, they were defeated by the Pallavas from farther south, who in turn were opposed by the Pandyas and the Cholas from still farther south.[115] No ruler of this period was able to create an empire and consistently control lands much beyond their core region.[114] During this time, pastoral peoples, whose land had been cleared to make way for the growing agricultural economy, were accommodated within caste society, as were new non-traditional ruling classes.[116] The caste system consequently began to show regional differences.[116]
In the 6th and 7th centuries, the first devotional hymns were created in the Tamil language.[117] They were imitated all over India and led to both the resurgence of Hinduism and the development of all modern languages of the subcontinent.[117] Indian royalty, big and small, and the temples they patronised drew citizens in great numbers to the capital cities, which became economic hubs as well.[118] Temple towns of various sizes began to appear everywhere as India underwent another urbanisation.[118] By the 8th and 9th centuries, the effects were felt in South-East Asia, as South Indian culture and political systems were exported to lands that became part of modern-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.[119] Indian merchants, scholars, and sometimes armies were involved in this transmission; South-East Asians took the initiative as well, with many sojourning in Indian seminaries and translating Buddhist and Hindu texts into their languages.[119]
After the 10th century, Muslim Central Asian nomadic clans, using swift-horse cavalry and raising vast armies united by ethnicity and religion, repeatedly overran South Asia's north-western plains, leading eventually to the establishment of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate in 1206.[120] The sultanate was to control much of North India and to make many forays into South India. Although at first disruptive for the Indian elites, the sultanate largely left its vast non-Muslim subject population to its own laws and customs.[121][122] By repeatedly repulsing Mongol raiders in the 13th century, the sultanate saved India from the devastation visited on West and Central Asia, setting the scene for centuries of migration of fleeing soldiers, learned men, mystics, traders, artists, and artisans from that region into the subcontinent, thereby creating a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture in the north.[123][124] The sultanate's raiding and weakening of the regional kingdoms of South India paved the way for the indigenous Vijayanagara Empire.[125] Embracing a strong Shaivite tradition and building upon the military technology of the sultanate, the empire came to control much of peninsular India,[126] and was to influence South Indian society for long afterwards.[125]
Early modern India
In the early 16th century, northern India, then under mainly Muslim rulers,[127] fell again to the superior mobility and firepower of a new generation of Central Asian warriors.[128] The resulting Mughal Empire did not stamp out the local societies it came to rule. Instead, it balanced and pacified them through new administrative practices[129][130] and diverse and inclusive ruling elites,[131] leading to more systematic, centralised, and uniform rule.[132] Eschewing tribal bonds and Islamic identity, especially under Akbar, the Mughals united their far-flung realms through loyalty, expressed through a Persianised culture, to an emperor who had near-divine status.[131] The Mughal state's economic policies, deriving most revenues from agriculture[133] and mandating that taxes be paid in the well-regulated silver currency,[134] caused peasants and artisans to enter larger markets.[132] The relative peace maintained by the empire during much of the 17th century was a factor in India's economic expansion,[132] resulting in greater patronage of painting, literary forms, textiles, and architecture.[135] Newly coherent social groups in northern and western India, such as the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, gained military and governing ambitions during Mughal rule, which, through collaboration or adversity, gave them both recognition and military experience.[136] Expanding commerce during Mughal rule gave rise to new Indian commercial and political elites along the coasts of southern and eastern India.[136] As the empire disintegrated, many among these elites were able to seek and control their own affairs.[137]
A distant view of the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort
A two mohur Company gold coin, issued in 1835, the obverse inscribed "William IV, King"
By the early 18th century, with the lines between commercial and political dominance being increasingly blurred, a number of European trading companies, including the English East India Company, had established coastal outposts.[138][139] The East India Company's control of the seas, greater resources, and more advanced military training and technology led it to increasingly assert its military strength and caused it to become attractive to a portion of the Indian elite; these factors were crucial in allowing the company to gain control over the Bengal region by 1765 and sideline the other European companies.[140][138][141][142] Its further access to the riches of Bengal and the subsequent increased strength and size of its army enabled it to annex or subdue most of India by the 1820s.[143] India was then no longer exporting manufactured goods as it long had, but was instead supplying the British Empire with raw materials. Many historians consider this to be the onset of India's colonial period.[138] By this time, with its economic power severely curtailed by the British parliament and having effectively been made an arm of British administration, the East India Company began more consciously to enter non-economic arenas, including education, social reform, and culture.[144]
Modern India
Main article: History of the Republic of India
Historians consider India's modern age to have begun sometime between 1848 and 1885. The appointment in 1848 of Lord Dalhousie as Governor General of the East India Company set the stage for changes essential to a modern state. These included the consolidation and demarcation of sovereignty, the surveillance of the population, and the education of citizens. Technological changes—among them, railways, canals, and the telegraph—were introduced not long after their introduction in Europe.[145][146][147][148] However, disaffection with the company also grew during this time and set off the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Fed by diverse resentments and perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, and summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes, the rebellion rocked many regions of northern and central India and shook the foundations of Company rule.[149][150] Although the rebellion was suppressed by 1858, it led to the dissolution of the East India Company and the direct administration of India by the British government. Proclaiming a unitary state and a gradual but limited British-style parliamentary system, the new rulers also protected princes and landed gentry as a feudal safeguard against future unrest.[151][152] In the decades following, public life gradually emerged all over India, leading eventually to the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885.[153][154][155][156]
The rush of technology and the commercialisation of agriculture in the second half of the 19th century was marked by economic setbacks and many small farmers became dependent on the whims of far-away markets.[157] There was an increase in the number of large-scale famines,[158] and, despite the risks of infrastructure development borne by Indian taxpayers, little industrial employment was generated for Indians.[159] There were also salutary effects: commercial cropping, especially in the newly canalled Punjab, led to increased food production for internal consumption.[160] The railway network provided critical famine relief,[161] notably reduced the cost of moving goods,[161] and helped nascent Indian-owned industry.[160]
1909 map of the British Indian Empire
Jawaharlal Nehru sharing a light moment with Mahatma Gandhi, Mumbai, 6 July 1946
After World War I, in which approximately one million Indians served,[162] a new period began. It was marked by British reforms but also repressive legislation, by more strident Indian calls for self-rule, and by the beginnings of a nonviolent movement of non-co-operation, of which Mahatma Gandhi would become the leader and enduring symbol.[163] During the 1930s, slow legislative reform was enacted by the British; the Indian National Congress won victories in the resulting elections.[164] The next decade was beset with crises: Indian participation in World War II, the Congress's final push for non-co-operation, and an upsurge of Muslim nationalism. All were capped by the advent of independence in 1947, but tempered by the partition of India into two states: India and Pakistan.[165]
Vital to India's self-image as an independent nation was its constitution, completed in 1950, which put in place a secular and democratic republic.[166] Per the London Declaration, India retained its membership of the Commonwealth, becoming the first republic within it.[167] Economic liberalisation, which began in the 1990s, has created a large urban middle class, transformed India into one of the world's fastest-growing economies,[168] and increased its geopolitical clout. Indian films, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture.[169] Yet, India is also shaped by seemingly unyielding poverty, both rural and urban;[169] by religious and caste-related violence;[170] by Maoist-inspired Naxalite insurgencies;[171] and by separatism in Jammu and Kashmir and in Northeast India.[172] It has unresolved territorial disputes with China[173] and with Pakistan.[173] India's sustained democratic freedoms are unique among the world's newer nations; however, in spite of its recent economic successes, freedom from want for its disadvantaged population remains a goal yet to be achieved.[174]
Geography
Main article: Geography of India
India accounts for the bulk of the Indian subcontinent, lying atop the Indian tectonic plate, a part of the Indo-Australian Plate.[175] India's defining geological processes began 75 million years ago when the Indian Plate, then part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, began a north-eastward drift caused by seafloor spreading to its south-west, and later, south and south-east.[175] Simultaneously, the vast Tethyan oceanic crust, to its northeast, began to subduct under the Eurasian Plate.[175] These dual processes, driven by convection in the Earth's mantle, both created the Indian Ocean and caused the Indian continental crust eventually to under-thrust Eurasia and to uplift the Himalayas.[175] Immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement created a vast crescent-shaped trough that rapidly filled with river-borne sediment[176] and now constitutes the Indo-Gangetic Plain.[177] The original Indian plate makes its fi