Disobedient Subjects: A blueprint for protest

Between the Dandi Salt March in 1930 and Mahatma Gandhi setting sail to attend the Second Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress on 29 August 1931, the Civil Disobedience chapter in the history of the Indian Freedom struggle had come into its own.

Presented by the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai and the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts (AFA) and the Nursey Album in the latter’s collection, the aptly titled Disobedient Subjects exhibition takes you on a visual journey around Bombay, today’s Mumbai, to witness the unfolding of the Civil Disobedience Movement against colonial rule in British India’s financial capital from a century ago.

We see grainy black and white images of well-known South Bombay landmarks with swarming crowds from multiple perspectives. In one striking top shot of Flora Fountain, there are a variety of men’s traditional headgear, showing the glorious diversity of the city and its inhabitants turned protestors.

A large number of citizens and many women amongst them, gather around the colonial city’s buildings and civic architecture, picketing, in effect, preparing a blueprint for protest that would anticipate people’s collectives, and more in free India.

It is impossible not to be affected by the way in which ordinary everyday citizens and women, particularly, stare back, unafraid, at the camera with a certain mutinous resolve after they have performed an illegal act (such as making salt illicitly, or clutching at the nationalist flag, or having boycotted stores selling European and British goods). As Sumathi Ramaswamy, the curator who first noticed these while working on Gandhi and visual culture, says, “This is an act that required immense courage— and fortitude. And the fact that they frequently do so with a tiny smile suggests as well that they were likely aware of what they were doing and want the camera to capture (for posterity) their act”. Curated by the US-based scholars Sumathi Ramaswamy and Avrati Bhatnagar, the project began during the Covid years.

The Nursey album piqued their interest because, although it includes photographs of Gandhi, the bulk of the 245 images do not show much of his presence. Instead, the focus is on the people of Bombay (the “disobedient” women, men, and some children), the larger environment in which they displayed their disobedience, and the range of “disobedient” activities they undertook between April 1930 and August 1931.

The photographs also offer vital clues to the history of photography and the juncture at which it was becoming a tangible and lively presence on the streets of colonial India’s big cities, especially Bombay. As the curators point out, from almost the time of the camera’s invention in Europe in 1839, Bombay was a key node in the global network that developed around photography.

“In Bombay, we hear of photographers Narayen Daji, Hurrichund Chintamon, Shivashanker Narayen, and Shapoor N Bhedwar, whose works are now being studied by scholars for the visual perspective they provide on the city and its residents in the late 19th century. Generations of Indian photographers produced images not unlike what a European photographer was producing, but from the early years of the 20th century, as the anti-colonial movement began to take to the streets, the camera followed,” they add. And as the camera itself became lighter, cheaper and more mobile, the photographer also went into the streets.

The photographs remind us of the complex and skilful political negotiations that ran through the Freedom Movement. As Ramaswamy points out, when Gandhi “disobediently” led his fellow Indians, he was operating in the context of the British empire, which at its core was authoritarian but not necessarily illiberal.

“The British empire also prided itself on the rule of law — and of course, the genius of civil disobedience was to call into question and protest rules and regulations that may be legal but were not necessarily just, moral, or ethical”, she says. The images speak of solidarity and camaraderie that emerge when citizens come together. Today, as narratives, especially around the Freedom Movement, are being contested and quite belligerently, exhibitions like this can help restore some of the disappearing nuance from public debates, history and collective memory.