The Tribals of India: Through the Lens of Sunil Janah

Rating:
Summary: An excellent reference, with wonderful photographs
Review: Sunil Janah is known for his landmark photographs of the man-made Bengal Famine of the the 1940's. He went on to document the independence and class struggles and ethnic conflicts of the subcontinent, and India's transformation from a mainly rural society into a modern industrial state. He is also known for his photographs of Indian classical dance and temple sculpture, and of the political and cultural luminaries of his time, ranging from the Mahatma to Indira. Janah's passion, however, has been the painstaking photography of the ordinary people of the subcontinent - its villagers and city dwellers, its workers, miners, farmers, and fisher-folk.. Janah pursued this passion over five decades, producing a great historical and anthropological record. This record is marked by a technical mastery of black and white photography that, with image after striking image, achieves not only the important function of documentation, but touches and deeply moves the attentive viewer, thus reaching the level of reverential art. This book offers us one unusual aspect of Janah's work. It is a photographer's pictorial and textual record of his encounters with the "original", "tribal" peoples of India. Several decades of Janah's travels in the diverse tribal regions of the subcontinent are covered, and many wonderful photographs are included. Janah's regard for these peoples is evident, and the subject is treated with delightful candor as well as unusual humility and simplicity. The geographic and temporal range covered by just one person is also quite striking. Janah is careful in his reportage, staying always at the direct human level of a traveller among people he learns from and respects, noting both the painful realities of survival, as well as the joys of tribal living. This evident in both the text and in the photographs. We believe that this book will come to be regarded as a classic of straightforward, yet personal, photo-reportage. But, like all of Janah's work, there is a subtext of viewpoint that, though understated, cannot be ignored, and a context which makes the work a significant sociopolitical contribution. Many of these photographs were taken in the 'forties, fifties and sixties. On putting the book down, I could not help but reflect that much of what. Janah describes in the text and photographs is now almost vanished. A sense of personal loss came over me. For, as I read and looked at the photographs, the characters had come alive for me, almost as if I had travelled in Janah's shoes, a recepient of the tribal folks' individual and collective hospitality and warmth. Janah comes out of a tradition of political reportage, and he takes pride in this. But he was able, in his work, to jettison all shrillness, formula, and dogma, without abandoning conscience. He thus found a quietude, where he could see. Through his eyes, we too can see - the land and the people. And so, despite Janah's avoidance of moral posturing, those who read this book with care will likely come away personally "moved", in the true sense of that word, with a different perspective on these important but little-known "smaller peoples" and their, often less-than-fortunate, interaction with the larger masses of humanity. This is political-moral "movement" at its best, achieved without force or subterfuge. And the cause is an urgent and worthy one, which needs recruits, though not of the fanatic variety. The few remaining "tribal" tracts in India are one of the handful of remaining regions on this planet where "smaller peoples" have not yet been completely bulldozed under by "progress". Daily, the land and the traditional resources shrink, and those who hew to traditional ways find themselves increasingly lost. The loss of biological diversity of species has been much remarked upon. But the loss of cultural diversity within our own species is no less rapid. The consequences of this loss of millenia of accumulated (and processed and organized) genetic and cultural information may, in the long run, portend much worse for this planet than our flagrant burning-off of its energy resources and our pollution of its air, water and soil. Our modern "civilization" may have become a compulsive, and thus pathological, activity, a cancer born of miscommunication among the parts of an organic whole. This cancer is killing off the whole organism in pursuit of unrestrained outward appetites driven by cultivated inward insecurities. These make us blind to the effects of our actions on other parts of the whole. But, like any cancer, we are doomed to perish with the organism. The tribals, if they survive, offer us hope. For, in all their human imperfection, they remind us of what it is like to be truly human, to be fully human. They do this, not by any special virtue on their part, but by continuing to do the many little things we humans have been doing, and thus enjoy, and have gotten good at, over many thousands of generations; and by remaining, of necessity, aware of their own fragility and dependence and connection with other life around them. In the midst of spreading pathology, they are islands of healthier tissue, of sanity, of connection with the whole. This book is comprehensive and well-organized, and can serve as an excellent introduction to the diverse tribal populations of the subcontinent. It does suffer, however, from somewhat less than optimal reproductions of the photographs of the tribals. It would be wonderful if this book were reprinted with better technology to bring out the rich texture, detail, and arresting three-dimensional effect of the original black and white photographs. Some of us were fortunate to have seen some of these originals in a recent exhibition here in New York, in the summer of '98. More on Sunil Janah's work on India may be found at the website: