19th Century Colonial India through Photographs: A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Raja Deen Dayal's Select Photographs

Abstract

Photographs have always been considered as a valuable visual source material for history. While providing us a glimpse into the past in changeless form at its face value, they also help us delve into the mindset of the photographers and their patrons. This is especially applicable in the context of Indian Subcontinent during the late 18^th and 19^th centuries. The art of photography in India was introduced with an imperialist superior mindset of the colonial rulers and thus, was utilised accordingly in its initial phase, i.e. to index and catalogue the natives and Indian subcontinent as the British deemed fit. However, as the craft gained popularity, it didn’t always work out as the colonial rulers intended and instead natives were also able to appropriate it to suit their purposes to a certain extent. Accordingly, the following paper focuses on the initial positive and negative effects of the coming of photography in India with the British personnel being at the forefront in the first half of the paper. It moves on to delve deeper into the underlying ideologies that shaped the evolution of photography in the subcontinent. Further, in the second half of the paper, few select photographs of the first official photographer of India, Raja Deen Dayal are analysed with a socio-cultural lens. The aim is to depict how photographs can be utilised to better understand the psyche of the old native princely elite and new British aristocratic class as they sought to legitimise their position to stay relevant and establish themselves anew respectively, in the face of changing landscape of society.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46700/asssr/2024/v6/i1/J2403