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Abstract
Reaching wide and diverse audiences, magic lantern shows and postcards played an important role in the dissemination of visual knowledge of other cultures in the British colonial era. Fakirs were a popular subject of postcards and lantern slides representing India. This reflected the official attention paid to religious ascetics who were seen as representative of everything that was problematic and in need of improvement in the country in colonial texts. Images of fakirs stood in a tradition of the representation of the “type”. However, following Barthes, it is important to analyse the connection between image and text. Lantern shows came with readings, which were more often preserved than images, but specific examples of images and texts together are taken from Harold Mackinder's and John Stoddard's lectures on India. The lectures are evidently anchored in the colonial discourse, while the images of postcards and slides evade the boundaries set by the text.
Notes
An interesting overview of “Western” images of fakirs through the centuries can be found at F.W. Pritchett's website: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1800_1899/hinduism/ascetics/ascetics.html (accessed 23 September 2011).
Non-fiction film was to become the most prominent of these. Films of India depicting fakirs occur relatively frequently, but usually represent conjurers and jugglers. For this reason, films are not part of this essay.
See, for example, the cart-de-visite by Samuel Bourne, http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/photocoll/f/zoomify56283.html (accessed 23 September 2011). Patterson (Citation2006), also mentions the publication of Risley's People of India in 1908, in Ibid., 152.
I have benefitted from discussions in R.C. Morris (Citation2009). Especially the introduction by R.C. Morris (pp. 1–28), and the article by J.L. Hevia (2009).
The article by Goldsworthy (Citation2010), directed me to Barthes and his usefulness for postcard images.
The fact that this act was implemented within six years of the English “The Poor Law Amendment Act” (1834) suggests that the concerns about vagrancy were not entirely typical of colonial India, but reflected a broader “bourgeois” concern with wanderers at this time. Unfortunately, possible further implications of this connection are beyond the scope of this article.
I have seen hundreds of cards from India, in private and online collections.
The image can be found at www.imagesofasia.com/html/india/hindu-beggar.html (accessed 26 September 2011).
The image can be found at http://www.imagesofasia.com/html/india/fakir-punjab.html (accessed 26 September 2011).
The card was sent in 1915.
See, for example, www.imagesofasia.com/html/india/varanasi-fakir.html and www.imagesofasia.com/html/india/fakirs-varanasi.html (accessed 26 September 2011).
For the period December 1907–February 1908, there are seven different announcements, showing that this was a popular topic.
It was easier to store the paper readings than the bulky glass slides, that needed careful looking after. Partly because it was officially a more “popular” form of entertainment, no official institution was designated to archive slides.
York's lantern readings: India, London, E. Marshall, 1875.
The Optical Lantern Reading: India Lecture, Alabaster, Passmore and Sons, printers, 4th edition, nd. A copy in the British Film Institute, from Riley Bros in Bradford, has penciled comments relating to the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. This was officially announced at the Delhi Durbar in December 1911. The text in this reading is exactly the same as York's lantern reading from 1875 as well as India in the Northwest, nd. Most quotations are from the Optical Lantern Reading.
Millais (nd), Life in Kashmir. Slide 26. This particular slide mentions the winter of 94–95, assuming this is 1894–1895, the lecture will have been published a few years after this winter.
Optical Lantern Readings: Calcutta, Rosiebelle and the Dwarf, a Humourous Cure for Intemperance (nd). Slide 35, 14.
Optical Lantern Reading: India Lecture, Slide 32, 37.
Yorke (nd), Slide 31–32. Yorke was of the Christian Vernacular Education Society.
Descriptive Readings for Lantern Slides (nd), Slide 8.
Descriptive Readings, 32.
Calcutta, nd. Slide 35, 14.
India Lecture, Slide 32.
India Lecture, 32a.
The story of this fakir was a famous one. See Lamont (Citation2004: 22, 23).
Popular Lectures for the Magic Lantern: Missionary Enterprise in Many Lands (nd), Slide 12, 9, 10.
Lecture I covers the most Southern part of India up to the Nilgiri Hills; lecture II focuses on Birma; lecture III deals with Calcutta and the Darjeeling; lecture IV covers Benares, Lucknow and Cawnpore; lecture V covers Bombay city and a few of its surroundings; lecture VI covers Rajastan, lecture VII Delhi, Agra, Hardwar and Mussoori; lecture VIII the Punjab and the Northwest Frontier.
These two images are from Mackinder (Citation1910). They are not part of the edition on the website although the texts are exactly the same. The images can also be found in Ryan (Citation1997: 199).
Stoddard concludes his “Wail from India's Coral Strand” with: “I'm glad to take the steamer now, and sail for other shores”, 138.
The website of F.W. Pritchett shows a number of fakirs practising asceticism in postures that are unfamiliar to non-South Asians. So far, I have only found an image of a fakir with withered hands once on postcards.
