The need to memorialize the events of 1857-8 gave rise to almost a mini-industry as descriptions and visuals of those traumatic days were quickly “incorporated into gazetteers, summarized in guide books and celebrated in adventure stories for boys” (Narayani Gupta, 2005). A hundred and fifty years after, there has been considerable re-visiting of existing material as well as the unearthing of new information, much of which has found its way to a flurry of seminars, talks and exhibitions and encouraged more of what are known as mutiny tours. The latter — trips to ‘mutiny sites’ by relatives and kin of British soldiers and others — had a rather sorry reception last September, as some, who were keen to see the historic Residency in Lucknow (where over 2,000 Britons are buried) and further sites, were denied permission; others, who wanted to hold commemoration services in Meerut, Lucknow and Agra, were similarly rebuffed. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad was purported to be behind the objections, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, as well, made it clear that visits may be alright, but commemorative events were not. The ensuing furore indicate how sensitive such matters are, even a century and more after.

Over the last decade or so, visual representations have acquired salience in an understanding of these years and in 2007-8, two major exhibitions have brought paintings, lithographs and photographs to the fore; in London, the National Army Museum had also curated a special display of what is popularly regarded as one of the bloodiest and most ruthless phases in Indo-British relations. The Indian Council of Historical Research’s travelling exhibition, “Representations of 1857 — Recovering the Indian Voice”, that had its first viewing in Delhi’s India International Centre in May 2007 and later in Calcutta from January 21, consists of an impressive display of aquatints by G.F. Atkinson (of Curry and Rice fame) as well as several by artists unknown and unnamed.

Many of these have gory scenes of battle against the backdrop of meticulously represented historic buildings based clearly on photographs. Evocative visuals — it would be safe to assume that most were rendered by British artists — of lumbering elephant-drawn carts, a disconsolate Bahadur Shah Zafar, the taking of Jama Masjid and so on are now available for popular — and even more specialized — readings around 1857. The Indian voice is recovered through textual material — letters, orders, a few memoirs and depositions at trials of rebels. Much of the material has rarely been looked at earlier. There are only a few photographs at this exhibition, unlike the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts’ display (Triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi), entitled “Traces of the Uprising, 1857”, that showcases the work of photographers such as Felice Beato, Samuel Bourne, civil surgeon of Kanpur, John Tressider and others. Here again, the Indian gaze is missing except perhaps in the portraits by Ahmed Ali Khan of Lucknow — one of the earliest Indian photographers whose work is still available. Taken in 1856, his Lucknow albums had a certain prescience as they included British officers involved in the uprising as well as Indians who were to become rebel leaders.

Some photographs have acquired iconic status, irrevocably associated with the uprising, its suppression and British acquisition of India as a part of the Empire. Soon, the Memorial Well at Kanpur (Cawnpore), Kashmiri Gate in Delhi, the Residency at Lucknow were to become mutiny memorials, symbols of a growing and almost jingoistic patriotism in Britain. Visuals of these significant buildings passed through generations, often juxtaposed in albums with those of happy domesticity. The photograph served not only as a powerful mnemonic device but also as the site for conflicting word-images and fantasies, vital for a sense of Empire and a new phase of domination. For some who had lived through those days, the visual prompted memories, fears, anxieties — and maybe even pride. For those who were born after or who had not been anywhere near the scene of events, it could evoke a sense of patriotic fervour and a commitment to Empire.

Amidst the blood and gore, destroyed buildings, the narratives of torture, shame and anguish, the British annexed India into the expanding empire of Victoria. For 19th-century Victorian tourists, all agog with horror and fascination, visits to the Memorial Well became almost as popular as those to the Taj Mahal. The insignificant well — 9 feet wide and 50 feet deep — was the focus of one of the bloodiest events, as on July 16, 1857 over 150 bodies of British women and children massacred the night before were thrown down it. The victims had been imprisoned in what was known as the Bibighar in Cawnpore. Reprisal was equally bloody — sepoys purported to be guilty were tied to the mouths of cannons and blown up. Public display of this gory mass execution was part of a deliberate strategy to demonize the mutineers and frighten others into submission. The British covered up the well at Bibighar and, in 1860, erected a mausoleum with the Angel of Mercy statue on the spot, designed by the Italian sculptor, Carlo Marochetti. Marochetti became a favourite of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert after 1848, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy. At independence, the statue was removed to the Memorial Church.

Indians were prohibited from entering the precincts of the well during British rule and the careful positioning of the three men in Samuel Bourne’s photograph of the memorial complex — two in the grounds and one outside the enclosed garden — conveyed the message not only of relative size but also of boundaries and exclusion. The gate to the well is open, and it is possible that the man in uniform (to the right of the two standing inside) could be a durwan, and hence entitled to be there.

Bourne used humans in his photographs only to provide scale — they had an instrumental role to play and he used them as such — an attitude that coloured his approach to ‘natives’, be they porters or mere bystanders. The man standing outside the boundary railing appears to be leaning on it, and one can almost imagine him reflecting on the building and what it represented. Or maybe that’s the impression Samuel Bourne wished to create.

This photograph (picture) became a common postcard image in the late 19th and early 20th century, a metaphor for the heroism of the European women and children who had died on that horrendous night. It has been described by Omar Khan, who has worked on British photographs of the period, as “the single most important photographic location in British India” since there was scarcely a family album that did not contain at least one visual of the well. The print reproduced here from the large glass plate negative carries the numbers ‘25/117’ at the corner indicating that it is the 25th print of a limited series of 117 prints of the photograph. It was acquired as a loose page, obviously from a family scrap book/album made at the end of the 19th century or at the beginning of the 20th, at an antiquarian bookshop on Great Russell Street, London. On its verso are untidily glued nine small photographs, taken by a domestic photographer. The anonymous owner obviously lived in central India and there are the ‘Views of India’ genre of the odd temple, mosque and so on together with photographs of a bullock cart awaiting family members, the son of the house in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, his mother amidst period furniture and a chandelier. However, the pride of place is accorded to Bourne’s photograph of the well on the reverse. It looms, much larger in size and in history.

It was not uncommon to save and display visuals of a public event alongside highly personal moments: often, the family album became an archive of the times — where private memories were consciously displayed with visuals of sites that belonged to the public domain of collective suffering, subjugation and victory. Family and ‘local colour’ photographs juxtaposed with a commercial print of a historic event merged private memory with public grief, family snaps conflated easily with the more distant panoply of the raj. Such visual imbrications subtly reminded viewers of the need to govern, at times ruthlessly, a recalcitrant subject people. It reminded them that India was enticing, beautiful, as it was dangerous and threatening, a theme that continued to be played out by litterateurs, politicians and administrators alike.