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BOOKS
Memory
in Sepia
A monumental
homage to a Raj photographer
By
R.V.
Smith
BEATO'S
DELHI1857, 1997
By Jim Masselos and Narayani Gupta Ravi Dayal
Price: Rs 1,000
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The
"Mutiny" of 1857 threw up a wealth of literature in its aftermath
which has not diminished to date. Beato's Delhi 1857, 1997 proves that,
if proof indeed were needed. During the uprising many British men and
women maintained diaries and travelogues (Like the Young husband Collection
and Emily Eden's memoirs), recounting their experiences as fugitives or
witnesses to the gory events.
William
Howard Russell, the Irish journalist who reported the "Mutiny"
for The Times, London, has left a vivid account of it and of the atrocities
committed on the natives. And he happened to be in India about the same
time as Beato (1858). Captain Robert Tytler and his wife Harriet were
also caught up in the turmoil-one as a soldier and the other as a fugitive
who gave birth to a baby near the Flagstaff Tower in Delhi before her
escape to Karnal. Later, Fanthom, the British civil servant, was to write
his novel Mariam, A Story of the Mutiny which probably inspired Ruskin
Bond's A Flight of Pigeons and on which the film Junoon was based. One
thing that the "Mutiny" did was give access to Europeans to
the hitherto closed confines of the zenana, because British soldiers and
prize agents forced their way into them in search of rebels, mistresses
and wealth.
Beato's
Delhi is, however, not so much about people, as monuments and places,
because Felice A. Beato, like his brother, was basically a photographer
and not a writer. He had been to Crimea in 1856, where the disastrous
Charge of the Light Brigade was later immortalised by Tennyson, and had
also covered the Sudan campaign. With his "penchant for military
campaigns", Beato came to Calcutta in 1858 via the Suez canal and
visited parts of India, especially those affected by the "Mutiny".
He captured the Scorched Earth policy of the avenging British on camera
for two years at a time when photography was still in its infancy.
Looking
at the monuments of Delhi photographed by him, one is aghast to note that
they look far worse than what they are now. The Qutub, Jama Masjid, Red
Fort, Kashmiri Gate, Jantar Mantar, Metcalfe House, the monuments of Nizamuddin
and Mehrauli, the northern ridge, the walled city at large, the shrines
included, are a picture of despoliation or utter neglect during the sunset
years of the Mughals. Even the Taj Mahal in pictures of those days doesn't
seem as beautiful as now, for it was hidden then by dense foliage and
the present look was imparted during the time of Lord Curzon.
Beato's
brownish prints (56 in all), stand out in stark contrast to the black
and white ones of Jim Masselos, the Australian Indologist who, along with
historian Narayani Gupta, has brought out the publication. The book may
never have seen the light of day had not Masselos been lucky enough to
buy the two volumes of the masterpiece at a sale in Sydney in 1980. He
then retraced the footsteps of Beato to compare the state of Delhi's monuments
then and now with Gupta's help.
Many sites
have disappeared, like the Akbarabadi Masjid and Calcutta Gate, but what
remains has been well preserved, though there's room for improvement.
But Theophilus Metcalfe was the nephew (not son) of Thomas Metcalfe (who
died in 1853, not 1855, allegedly poisoned by Queen Zeenat Mahal), and
Begum Sumro's husband was an Austrian (not a Frenchman) whose father had
settled down at Treves, in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Also, the book
could have done with captions for the reader's benefit. But these are
minor aberrations in a highly informative and lucid text. As for Felice
(or Felix) Beato, he journeyed to China and Japan and eventually settled
down in Burma, where he opened a studio, and died in 1908 at the age of
83. A remarkable man and a remarkable book.
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