Capturing Birsa Munda:
The Virtuality of a Colonial-era
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VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 2004
Capturing Birsa Munda:
The Virtuality of a Colonial-era
Photograph
D
ANIEL J. RYCROFTAbstract:
By using the images of Birsa Munda’s photograph,copy print of a portrait and poster, this article analyses the
historical and ideological conditions that brought about the twofold
capture of Birsa Munda (the anti-missionary, anti-diku,
anti-Raj and freedom fighter from Ranchi) by Anglican
missionaries and Raj police in 1895 and discusses the
dissemination of these photographic images from camera
to archive to mass viewership. It cites the writings of
contemporary academics and activists to relate the viewing and
celebration of Birsa’s image to issues of post-nationalism.
It also debates the form, meaning and history of this
memorializing process.
List of Plates:
1.
Birsa Munda, photograph in Roy (1912:72), as reproduced in Sinha (1964:frontispiece). I suggest that the initial colonial-era production of this photograph
may have been overseen by Rev. Lusty in 1895. It provides the visual material,
which is reworked into Birsa’s iconography, emphasizing inter-textual links
between archival, academic and public spheres.
2.
Birsa Munda, copyprint of a portrait in Bayly (1990:347), from the NehruMemorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. The image is used in Bayly’s
The Rajexhibition (National Portrait Gallery, London, 1990) to represent ‘tribal rebellion’.
It fails to show the handcuffs, and therefore depoliticises the moment of capture.
The reworked image both reduces and idealises Birsa’s complex identity and
legacy.
3.
Birsa Ulgulan Centenary, poster disseminated throughout Ranchi District(Jharkhand Area Autonomous Council, southern Bihar) by Birsaites in 1995-2000
to celebrate the political achievements and environmental legacy of their Dharti
Aba (Father of the Earth). Birsa’s presence in contemporary Jharkhand is here
Indian Folklore Research Journal,
Vol.1, No.4, 2004: 53–68© 2004 National Folklore Support Centre
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I N D I A N F O L K L O R E R E S E A R C H J O U R N A L
signified by the portrait iconography evolved from the initial moment of
photographic capture, in 1895. I debate the form, meaning and history of this
memorialising process.
Introduction
One visual memorial for one man’s
legacy is a neat equation, yet one
which deserves analysis. Consider
Plates One (page 54), Two (page
61) and Three (page 64). They share
an identical subject, Birsa Munda
(1875-1900), the anti-missionary,
anti-diku (outsider) and ultimately
anti-Raj freedom fighter from
Ranchi, eastern India. Plate One,
a.c. 1895 photograph first
publish ed by the ethnographer
Sarat Chandra Roy in
The Mundasand their Country
(1912), is thesource image for a multitude of
reproductions, including the
portrait shown in Plate Two and
the iconised memorial seen in
Plate Three. Removed from their disparate textual locations, their visual
and indexical contradictions become more apparent. Plate One references
Birsa’s captivity whereas Plate Two illustrates his essential facial
characteristics, to enliven Barthes’ (1982:5-9) notion of the ‘spectrum’ or
captured referent, which works between the two Plates. This metamorphoses
into the effigial ‘punctum’ motif that signifies Birsa in Plate Three.
An awareness of these images’ multivalency requires a recognition of
the different discourses, or frames of dissemination, within which they
work. Birsa himself, as a self-fashioned messiah, a re-territorialising activist
and a colonial subject, may also be seen to work within different ‘social
texts’ (Spivak, 1985:331). Recent scholarship has offered the notion of ‘subject
effects’ (Spivak, 1985:341) to point to the fluctuating predicaments of colonialera
identities; oscillations between and within subaltern (i.e. mass mobilised)
and ethnocentric censual (i.e. demographic) perspectives.
By using these three reproductions as case studies, Part I will begin
with an analysis of the historical and ideological conditions that brought
about the two-fold capture of Birsa Munda by Anglican missionaries and
Raj police in 1895; by being photographed and then through imprisonment.
The reciprocal processes of de-territorialisation and rebellion, and of
D
ANIEL J. RYCROFTPlate 1
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confinement and freedom, will be pertinent to this analysis. Birsa’s own
hybridity, in terms of his shifting public image and personality, will be
counter-pointed by the Raj authority’s desire for fixed individual and social
identities as determined by penological and ethnographic photography (see
Arnold, 1994:148-187 and Pinney, 1997:17-71). Part II will then discuss the
dissemination of these photographic images; from camera to archive to mass
viewership. It will locate the visual and political changes that affected the
images during their inter-related life histories (see Davis, 1997:7-10 who
applies Kopytoff’s ‘cultural biography’ [1986:64-91] discourse to Indian
images). The paper will address the contemporary relevance of the issues
raised. By analysing the images’ sources, it will ask if their new contexts
manifest a neo-colonialist recapturing of Birsa, or if the reworked images
empower his ambivalent legacy. It will cite the writings of contemporary
academics and activists to relate the viewing and celebration of Birsa’s image
to issues of post-nationalism; notably Singh (1983), Basu (1994) and
Appadurai (1996).
Part I
Oh Birsa, they arrested you...
Oh Birsa, on your hand is the iron chain...
Oh Birsa, they took you by Ranchi road...
Oh Birsa, for the land you suffered...
Oh Birsa, you will come back again in the next life...
Oh Birsa, I grieve that they took you away.
(Birsaite [follower of Birsa] song from Singh [1983:281]).
Birsa Munda’s legacy is as diverse and ambivalent as his tragic life. Between
the polarised perceptions of the Birsaites and the Raj authorities, and their
contradicting desires for freedom and confinement, emerge, especially in
contemporary India, communities and agencies that have resurrected Birsa’s
image. Before discussing the visual and political frameworks of this virtuality,
it is necessary to historicise the confrontations and ideologies that brought
about Birsa’s two-fold capture.
The simultaneous immigration of Hindu diku, Christian missionaries,
and British tax-revenue systems into the nineteenth-century District of Ranchi
became a great burden for its agrarian populace. As documented by Rajcommissioned
surveys, this central plateau of the Chotanagpur
Administrative Division was seen to be inhabited by semi-savage Mundas:
‘The Mundas have lived for ages under conditions ill-calculated to develop
good qualities...There has been a continued struggle to maintain what they
consider their right in the land...The licentiousness indulged in by
Mundas...is of course incompatible with purity and chastity’ (Dalton,
1872:205).
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Their moral and economic condition was perceived to be frail,
generated by an inherent backwardness and an indebtedness nurtured by
the diku and the Raj administration. Territorial stabilities, such as the ancestral
khuntkatti
ownership system, were initially disrupted by the advent of theland-buying diku who created a monetised and prestige economy amongst
Chotanagpur’s indigenous rajas (feudal rulers). The new class-rifts, and
shifts in land ownership, enabled the encroaching Raj to first impose taxcollecting
regimes and then to govern, police and exploit the territory’s
resources. The animistic or
jahara (sacred-grove) religion of the Mundasalso provided fertile soils (or souls) for the various European Christian
missionaries to cultivate. Mission schools welcomed impressionable youths;
Birsa attended the Chaibasa German Mission from 1886-1890.Here, Birsa
learnt of biblical myths and of the Jesuits’ attitude towards the Munda sardars
(political leaders/agitators). Birsa’s self-perception assimilated two powerful
mindsets; messianism and revolutionary activism. The conflict between
the Jesuits and the sardars brought about Birsa’s transfer to a Vaishnavite
ashram (school/retreat) in Bandgaon, where he learnt of Hindu lores and
also experienced a vision of Vishnu. He would later witness Sing Bonga,
the sun deity of Jharkhandi Kheroals, and also see himself as a Munda
messiah. In Bandgaon, he began worshipping the tulsi plant (basil), wore
the sacred thread and dhoti (loincloth), and travelled around the villages
with his teacher. These shifts demonstrate Guha’s (1983:65-67) discussion
on the subaltern appropriation of different or elite (i.e. priestly) clothing
styles - such as the pagri (turban) and dhoti - during insurgency movements.
The emerging picture of Birsa as a hybrid personality, eclectic in its
multilayered formation and subaltern complexity, differs greatly from the
static ‘tribal’ identity assigned to him - first by colonial counter-insurgency
policy-makers, contemporary missionaries and journalists, and later by
nostalgic nationalists. During the 1890s, Birsa became increasingly active in
sardar politics whilst stabilising his position as a saviour of non-
Christianised Mundas. He was branded as a fraud by the missionaries,
who dismissed the Birsaites’ ‘acceptance of this young monkey as [God’s]
incarnation’; to quote the Society for the Propogation of the Gospels Mission
(1895), cited by Singh (1983:224).
Rumours of Birsa’s miraculous and prophetic qualities were
disseminated by the sardars to foster and mobilise sentiment against the
missions and the Raj authorities. Spivak (1985:351-356) discusses the ‘rumour’
concept as central to subalterns’ communication narratives. In Birsa’s case,
the missionaries’ responses to these rumours directly influenced police
action. The Indian Forest Act VII of 1882 disenfranchised the Mundas from
their natural resources. As part of a re-territorialising strategy, Birsa
persuaded his followers not to plant rice, claiming that his powers would
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ANIEL J. RYCROFT57
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generate the crop instead. This action captured the attention of the Raj
authorities who, fearing reduced revenue, warranted Birsa’s arrest. Their
first attempt on 9 August 1895 failed due to the resistance by Birsa’s father
and family, who outnumbered Luchman Lal (Head Constable of Tamar Police
Station) and his two officers (see Singh, 1983:60-63).
The involvement of the legal authorities generates a triadic relationship
between Birsa, the missionaries and the Raj, which is integral to an
assessment of Plate One. As well as involving issues of hybridity and religiocultural
authority, this triad represents the dynamics of identity-production
at work in the photograph first published by S.C.Roy in 1912. Roy’s
publication is informed by colonial-era ethnologists and missionaries, and
works within an academic discourse of humanist knowledge production.
His letter (1912b) to A.C.Haddon, then Reader in Ethnology at the University
of Cambridge, accompanied his sending of the book, and points to a network
of interests surrounding the publication: ‘An expression of your opinion
about the book...will be of inestimable value to me. [....] The Hon’ble
Mr. E.A. Gait...has been pleased to characterise the book...as "a most valuable
contribution to Indian Ethnography"...’. This politicised academic arena,
manifested by Haddon (1911), Roy (1912) and Risley (1915), is comparable to
the institutional discourses discussed by Tagg (1988:60-65), which generate
the evidential force of photography. Roy’s ethnographic publication was an
important addition to this growing lust for confinable visual and textual
information. Paddayya (1990:132) notes the increased use of photographs in
ethnological literature from the beginning of the twentieth century as marking
the humanist agenda of the new Ethnographic Survey, founded in India in
1901. The racialised somatotyping that determined these censual and visual
representations has had an impact on cultural fields not directly linked to
anthropological enquiry. For example I debate elsewhere (Rycroft, 1999) the
importance of ethnicised visions of ‘the Santhal’ to the modernist artists of
the Santiniketan School. Here though, my interest resides in the specific
textuality of Birsa Munda’s image, and its subsequent widespread
dissemination that is not accounted for in the reconstructive methodology
of Paddayya.
With a preface by E.A. Gait (a Raj census-maker) and empirical
contributions from missionaries in Ranchi, Roy fosters both a primordialist
and sympathetic perception of ‘the Mundas’, revealing his own stance
between the ideologies of insurgency and counter-insurgency. The webs of
identity-production, and contradictory perceptions of difference-at-work,
demonstrate the applicability of notions of hybridity and ambivalence offered
by Bhabha (1994:102-122). The missionaries were seen by Roy as
‘acknowledged authorities’ (1912:viii) on ‘tribal’ India. Birsa did not have
such a benevolent view. Roy (1912:viii) credits three missionaries,
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Rev. Dr. A. Nottrott, Rev. Father Van Hoeck, and Rev. H. Whitely ‘for most
of the illustrations of the book’. It may have been another, Rev. Lusty (of the
Anglican Mission at Murhu, near Ranchi), who actually oversaw the
photographing of Birsa in captivity for the first time. Following rumours
that the Birsaites were threatening to massacre all non-Birsaite diku, Rev.
Lusty reported Birsa’s perceived criminality to G.R.K. Meares, the Ranchi
District Superintendent of Police. Birsa’s retreat at Chalkad was subjected to
surveillance. His nighttime capture ensued on 23 August 1895: ‘The Subinspector
from Khunti...entered Birsa’s room: he was found asleep, his body
smeared with turmeric [a sign of his otherworldliness]. He struggled
violently when handcuffs were slipped on his wrists...Birsa was then taken
out and marched away without any trouble’ (Singh, 1983:67 citing Meares,
1895; also see the Birsaite song quoted above).
These are probably the events directly leading up to the photographic
moment reproduced by Roy. It also demonstrates the implementation of
institutionalised discipline, as reworked by the Raj police officers, their
clinical reaction to missionaries’ paranoia, and the moment of capture that
generated Birsa’s now widespread iconography. Singh (1983:65-70) describes
at length Rev. Lusty’s involvement in Birsa’s arrest and subsequent journey
to Ranchi. He notes that Lusty had not seen Birsa before, and that after
Lusty’s involvement in Birsa’s arrest and imprisonment, Lusty himself
received police protection. I suggest that Lusty oversaw the photograph in
question (Plate One) sometime during the convoy’s return from the site of
arrest at Chalkad to Ranchi. Roy (1912:324) presents the photograph as
following Birsa’s second arrest in 1900. Singh accepted this idea and
republished it as ‘Sick Birsa’ to align his illustration with Roy’s chronology.
Singh also republishes a full-length photograph of Birsa between two
policemen, with a tent in the background. This indicates that the
photographic moment in question probably occurred on the journey between
Birsa’s arrest and his imprisonment. Birsa’s healthy body (perhaps covered
in turmeric) and ornamented revolutionary dress (turban and earrings) also
indicate that the image was probably photographed at this time of August
1895. The original photograph’s moth-eaten surface may well have come
about during the period between 1895 and 1912, when it may have been
kept in the institutional archive of the Anglican Mission (whether at Murhu
or Ranchi), and then lent to Roy by Rev. H. Whitely.
This conjecture, regarding the timing of the photograph, is important
as it directly affects an understanding of the Deputy Commissioner’s attitude
to the captive Birsa, and also to an interpretation of the photograph’s
subsequent life history. Rather than becoming an image of a dying or sick
Birsa (as would be assumed if Roy’s and Singh’s readings were accepted), it
becomes an image of vitality and divinity, i.e. mobile subaltern resistance,
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ANIEL J. RYCROFT59
VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 2004
faced by the terror of institutional capture. As such, its visual successors -
the mass-reproduced images published by Singh (1983), notably the open
air statue at Ranchi and the Congress Party banners, and the Birsaite memorial
in Plate Three - become aligned with both the self-assertive sentiments of
Birsa, and with their own nationalist and revivalist milieux.
The British legal and penal codes, however, sought to suppress Birsa’s
active resistance. The Ranchi police made more arrests, as Birsaites demanded
the immediate release of their Dharti Aba. By holding Birsa in captivity, the
Raj administrators sought to ‘explode the myth of Birsa’s divinity and to
kill the faith’ (Singh, 1983:70). They held an open-air trial so that his captured
and disciplined body could be witnessed by his followers. The District
Commissioner desired the Raj’s legal superiority to become visible through
the visual reception of Birsa’s disempowerment. Birsa was fined and
sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. In fear of retribution, many Birsaites
reconverted to Christianity at the Anglican Mission. I suggest that Rev.
Lusty and his staff captured both Birsa’s image and, increasingly, his
followers in a project of reconversion that went beyond individual spirituality
to extend into socialised hierarchies and community infrastructures.
Whilst in prison, Birsa consolidated his religious, as opposed to
political, character amongst police staff. The sardars continued in their efforts
to maintain Birsa’s divine status amongst his followers by commenting on
his imminent resurrection (i.e. release from jail) and on the return of divinity
to his body (see Singh, 1983:79-80). This notion of Birsa’s gold (i.e. clay or
turmeric covered) body vis-à-vis his captured body represents a symbolic
invocation of freedom, or autonomy, into the social arena. It also signals
the fluctuating notions of presence/absence that are pertinent to an assessment
of Birsa’s iconography, and exemplifies the role of rumour as a mobilising
social text. On his release from prison in 1897 Birsa sought to retrieve his
decolonised identity by beginning a campaign of revivalism, which invoked
the sovereignty of his ancestors’ autonomous control over their land:
‘sirmarefirun raja jai’
or ‘victory to the ancestral kings’. Birsa represented the colonialprison to his followers as the ‘whitewashed house’ (Singh, 1983:87) - vis-àvis
the clay houses of the Munda and other villagers - which resonates with
indigenous perceptions of the painted brick architecture of the landowning
diku (see Rycroft, 1996:67-81 for my discussion of mural aesthetics in
Jharkhand).
Having renewed their communalist sentiment, the Birsaites began
their
ulgulan (uprising) on 24 December 1899. They first attackedChristianised-Mundas, missionaries and churches, and later the Deputy
Commissioner of Ranchi. A bloody confrontation with the Raj police ensued
on 9 January 1900 at the Sail Rakab hill, near Dombari. Birsa fled into the
jungle, but there were more than twenty Birsaite deaths, and numerous
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reconversions to Christianity, for fear of the police’s ‘reign of terror’ (Singh,
1983:128). Offering a reward of five hundred rupees, Birsa was eventually
recaptured and sent again to Ranchi prison. This is when Roy and Singh
imply that the photograph shown in Plate One was taken. His health
deteriorated and on 9 June 1900, Birsa died, perhaps of dysentery and cholera.
This official cause of death, as issued by Capt. A.R.S. Anderson,
Superintendent of Ranchi Jail, was challenged by the Evangelical Mission
of Chotanagpur, who suggested poisoning either by the police authorities
or by sardars wanting to keep their plans secret (see Singh, 1983:235).
The resulting trial of 300 other Birsaites became national news, with
Surendra Nath Banerjee (editor of
The Bengalee newspaper) leading thecriticism against the British authority’s legal cover-ups and delays. He cited
the ‘heavy manacles’ (1900:4) suppressing the captive Mundas, while
TheStatesman
of March 25, 1900, alleged that the Birsaites were denied any legaldefence. Even though the Calcutta-based Bengali nationalists largely despised
the chhotolok - low-caste and ‘tribal’ communities (see Banerjee, 1989:139-
147) - they were swift in mobilising sentiment against the corrupt British
legal institutions. In the aftermath of the
ulgulan, Birsa’s re-territorialisingmotivations were eventually recognised by the Raj administration, in the
form of the 1908 Chotanagpur Tenancy Act (see K.R.Narayanan, 1998).
Birsa’s religious legacy survived amongst the acquitted Birsaites and
is still celebrated today. In India’s political arena, his anti-Raj image was
transformed into a silent yet powerful icon of national resistance, and more
recently has been reinvented as emblematic of a vanishing ‘tribal’ and
environmental heritage. A mass-reproduced poster drawing (Plate Three),
which commemorates the Birsa Ulgulan Centenary 1995-2000 in and around
Ranchi, shows the enlarged turbanned head of Birsa present amongst a
grove of sacred
sarajom (sal, or shorea robusta) trees. Birsa’s facial iconographycorresponds to the initial image published by Roy. Birsa’s visual reincarnation
is seemingly dependent upon the original moment of tortuous capture.
The virtuality of Birsa’s visual memorial, however, enables new subjectivities
- those of viewer-consumers - to be created and mobilised.
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VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 2004
Part 2
This part aims to discuss the
virtuality of Birsa’s posthumous
image. Although emerging from one
image (Plate One), the diversity of the
consumption of Birsa’s legacy is
engaging. The multifarious
reproductions of the image should be
related to the social breadth of their
consumption. Plate Two shows a
painted print of Birsa, as exhibited in
The Raj: India and the British, 1600-
1947, a high-profile exhibition at
London’s National Portrait Gallery,
1990. This copyprint ‘portrait’
culminates the sub-section ‘Imperial
Glory and Indian Dissent’. The editorcurator’s
text concludes: ‘In 1899
[Birsa] proclaimed that the Mundas
should fight against the ‘Kingdom of the Demon’, the British Empire.
Following a mass uprising, he was captured by the police and put on trial,
during which he died of cholera’ (Bayly, 1990:347). ‘He died of cholera.
Stop’. This phrase, starved of sentiment, subjects ‘Indian dissent’ to a
painless and unambiguous death. In its hollow simplicity, it reflects both
Bayly’s and the Raj administration’s Munda-centric interpretation of the
Birsaite ulgulan. It continues the ethnographic mentality by differentiating
between the well-documented ‘peasant rebellions’ (Bayly, 1990:347) and the
more impenetrable, and supposedly isolated, history of the ‘"tribal" people’
(Bayly, 1990:347).
Having begun life as an evidential photograph, the image
metamorphoses, through the copyprint, into a ‘rare portrait of a tribal political
leader’ (Bayly, 1990:347). Part of the legitimacy of The Raj exhibition stems
from its dissemination of rare and unseen archival material. The aura
surrounding the image of the copyprint therefore becomes more tangible
even as the accompanying text manipulates the viewer-readers’ interpretation
into a ‘tribalist’ frame. Barthes (1982:57) discusses the general relationship
between the photographic image and the viewer. Once the viewer’s gaze is
passed beyond the frame, the representational power of the image’s content,
or ‘punctum’, remains confined within the frame. If Plate One was displayed
alongside the portrait, the viewer-consumer may have problematised the
framing of the copyprint. Roy (1912) was itself exhibited as an object of display.
By omitting Birsa’s handcuffs the image becomes a dehistoricised portrait.
The unknown history that Bayly laments is marginalised as he speaks; as
both the portrait and text capture and rework an incomplete image.
Capturing Birsa Munda: The Virtuality of a Colonial-era Photograph
Plate 2
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The image is presented as a copyprint (slide) of a painted portrait of
Birsa. The copyprint itself is housed in the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library (NMML), New Delhi, and was acquired by the NMML from the
holdings of the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti. I am grateful to the
Librarian of the NMML for this information. The location of the portrait
itself (as opposed to the copyprint) is not known to the NMML and was not
cited by Bayly. It is possible that it is now displayed in the Central Hall of
Parliament, as the Birsa Munda Statue Committee (1998) mentions that there
is portrait of Birsa in this location. Its portrait qualities suggest that it may
have been commissioned by the Government of India for this purpose.
This aesthetic aspect is shared by the copyprint portraits of Bhagat Singh -
a nationalist ‘warrior hero’ (Bayly, 1990:339) - and Gopal Krishna Gokhale (a
Congress politician) shown in The Raj exhibition. The creation and display
of portraits of political leaders has been discussed by Pinney (1997:99-107)
in the context of Arundale’s Nara Ratna Mandir (Temple of Human Greatness),
Indore. Pinney suggests that Arundale’s humanist celebration of these
leadership qualities contributes to the ‘complex hybridity’ (1997:100) of Indian
national identity, and that the viewing of these portraits represents a
conflation of a Hindu way of seeing - darshan - whereby the viewer is filled
with the essence of the viewed being, with the traditional European way of
experiencing the sublime. In the case of Birsa’s images, these perspectives
differ greatly from the original photographic moment and intentions. The
complex hybridity of the images resonate with the diverse contexts of their
viewership; from a missionary archive, to academic publications and
exhibitions, to India’s Parliament building, to centenary celebrations.
Birsa’s visual legacy also changes as the photograph is reproduced
and repainted. Plate One shows how the framing gaze of the colonial-era
photographer is deflected by Birsa. In Plate Two this is less apparent as the
portraitist’s hand has given Birsa’s eyes a direct, almost confrontational,
conviction, a quality usually associated more with the photographer. In
Plate One, Birsa’s demeanour is one of victimised contemplation; his gaze
well off to the viewers’ right, his brow furrowed. The iconography of
subalternity in India here resides in a criminalised body. A revealing
comparison can be made with the earlier sketch of Seedhoo Manghee: Chief
of the Santhal Rebels, as published in the Illustrated London News (1856:200).
This ‘Santhal rebel’ was observed in his prison solitude, brow furrowed,
and eyes off to the viewers’ right. I suggest that an ideological continuity is
apparent, in terms of motivation and imagery, between Seedhoo’s [Sido Manji]
sketcher, an officer from the Bengal Army, and Birsa’s photographic capturer.
Only the visual elements are heightened in the Birsa Ulgulan Centenary
memorial (Plate Three). In Plate Two, however, Birsa’s mythic heroism and
healthy complexion are accentuated. His image is resurrected into the halfmessiah/
half-conqueror iconography that enlivens his popular legacy. Barthes
(1982:11) differentiates between the photographic subject’s essential (inner)
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and effigy (outer) qualities. This binarism is useful to interpret the portraitist’s
externalising and updating of Birsa’s own self-fashioning. All of these images
differ from the typical ethnographic politic and aesthetic of framing racial
types. Birsa is individualised, initially to quell his mobilising power, then
to celebrate his essential qualities of resistance.
The painterly reworking of photographic images is a common practice
in India. Whether overlaying onto it, or copying from it, such enhancements
of the photograph dramatically alter its biography. Pinney (1990:76-79)
differentiates between the ubiquity of these painterly techniques in nineteenth
century Indian photography and the European reluctance to alter a
scientifically produced image. In the Indian context, the photograph serves
as an indexical template to be reworked and reproduced. Pinney’s distinction
is relevant, as is the aforementioned dual resonance of political portraits, as
it indicates a potential multivalency that is absent from the supposed fixity
of ethnographic and penologic colonial photographs. All of the images of
Birsa could be interpreted as working in and around these virtual ambivalent
spaces, and as such respond to their diverse viewership.
Beyond the colonial-era missionary archive, Birsa’s photograph enters
a new era as it comes to signify, for postcolonial historians, politicians and
curators, an afterlife. As Birsa died in prison, this presence has an
ambivalence, a transience and hauntedness associated with transmigratory
souls. For the NMML and for Bayly (Plate Two), Birsa’s visual and ideological
presence is immediately recaptured and reframed. Although the historic
reality of Birsa’s captivity is disavowed, manifesting a point of closure, his
apparent freedom signals an Utopian presence that is aligned with his selffashioning.
This reframed effigial presence is also evident in many of the
institutionalised and political references to and images of Birsa.
Assimilated into the nationalist framework, much of Birsa’s anti-diku
sentiment is marginalised. In Rourkela, an industrial conurbation near
Ranchi, the breadth of Birsa’s legacy is becoming assimilated directly into
the ‘tribalist’ discourse, which reflects both a growing awareness of nonmainstream
issues and a return to primordialist visions of the interior regions
of India. This process is exemplified by The Birsa Munda Cultural Centre at
the Birsa Maidan, Rourkela, as discussed by the Birsa Munda Statue
Committee (1998). Images of Birsa now appear on postage stamps, and his
name is invoked by groups as diverse as the Bihar Infantry Regiment, the
Birsa Commando Force (insurgents in Assam), as well as the peace loving
Birsaites in modern-day Ranchi. The appropriation of Birsa’s legacy, his
image and name, by such different groups (some nationally recognised,
others not) demonstrates the multivalency of images and communicative
ideas discussed by intellectuals, such as Appadurai (1996;158-177) and Basu
(1994:37-45), as manifestations of post-modern and post-national
communities.
Capturing Birsa Munda: The Virtuality of a Colonial-era Photograph
64
I N D I A N F O L K L O R E R E S E A R C H J O U R N A L
The academic freedom of decolonisation differs greatly from the
imperial milieux of Roy’s initial publication. In their different ways, both
Bayly’s and Singh’s publications testify to this. Although reiterating colonial
stereotypes of ‘tribal’ India, Bayly’s catalogue is able to draw on diverse
sources and critical contributors. Singh’s work similarly uses multifarious
source materials, bringing together folkloric, missionary and official archival
material. The assimilating nationalist slant of his work fails to differentiate
the validity of these sources, and does not critique the hegemonic structures
that often produced them. His work has, however, seeped into the
decolonising imagination of urban India, and has since inspired an awardwinning
novel, Jangal Ke Davedar (Rights to the Forest), New Delhi:
Radhakrisna, 1978, by Mahasweta Devi.
Conclusion
Singh’s use of photographs from diverse sources (including ethnographic
and travel literature - such as
F.B. Bradley-Birt’s
Chota Nagpur:A Little-Known Province of the
Empire
, London: Murray, 1910)parallels Roy’s borrowing of
missionary-based images. Their
lack of citation of the images’
specific sources indicates that the
role of the photographs in these
texts was subservient to the textual
material. However, this paper has
attempted to untie some of these
assumptions to reassess the potent
workings and virtuality of a
colonial-era photograph.
By using three interconnected
images (Plates One, Two
and Three) it has become possible
to identify a multitude of potential
meanings resonating from visual
memorials of Birsa. The historical
moment that produced the initial
image was intriguing, as it contained diverse and revealing socio-political
relationships. The alignment of the Anglican missionary’s and the Raj police’s
perception of Birsa and his followers, indicates an institutional network
which sought to capture and suppress subaltern rebellion. The ambivalent
position of Roy in this web of identities indicates the complexity of the
colonial-era milieux.
D
ANIEL J. RYCROFTPlate 3
65
VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 2004
Roy’s publication of an archival photograph has renewed the legacy
of Birsa in many different arenas. The portrait taken from this photograph,
and the other reproductions of it, have led to new contexts of the reception
and resurrection of Birsa’s ideology. The literary and visual settings of Singh’s
publication and Bayly’s exhibition themselves represent this diversity and
subsequent multivalency of the image; its visual resonance and continuing
life history. Birsa’s visual legacy began in captivity and is reframed in different
social and political contexts.
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D
ANIEL J. RYCROFTGRC Humanities
University of Sussex
email: DJrycroft@sussex.ac.uk
D
ANIEL J. RYCROFT
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