Capturing Birsa Munda:

 

Capturing Birsa Munda:

The Virtuality of a Colonial-era

Photograph

http://www.indianfolklore.org/journals/index.php/ifrj/article/viewFile/123/86

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VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 2004

Capturing Birsa Munda:

The Virtuality of a Colonial-era

Photograph

DANIEL J. RYCROFT

Abstract: 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 Nehru

Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. The image is used in Bayly’s The Raj

exhibition (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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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 Mundas

and their Country (1912), is the

source 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

DANIEL J. RYCROFT

Plate 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 the

land-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 Mundas

also 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

DANIEL J. RYCROFT

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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,

DANIEL J. RYCROFT

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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: ‘sirmare

firun raja jai’ or ‘victory to the ancestral kings’. Birsa represented the colonial

prison 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 attacked

Christianised-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 the

criticism against the British authority’s legal cover-ups and delays. He cited

the ‘heavy manacles’ (1900:4) suppressing the captive Mundas, while The

Statesman of March 25, 1900, alleged that the Birsaites were denied any legal

defence. 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-territorialising

motivations 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 iconography

corresponds 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.

DANIEL J. RYCROFT

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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.

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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.

DANIEL J. RYCROFT

Plate 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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GRC Humanities

University of Sussex

email: DJrycroft@sussex.ac.uk

DANIEL J. RYCROFT