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The Very Picture of Long-Ago India, Now Online

 

 

By Jeff Baron

Staff Writer

 

Washington - A rare, century-old book of photos that depict early 20th-century life in what are now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh has begun a new life online, thanks to efforts by a U.S. university.

 

India Illustrated, published about 1905 in the Indian city then known as Bombay, now Mumbai, was designed as a keepsake book for British residents from the time of the British Raj. It includes very little text, just a title page, a preface and brief caption information for each of the 215 photographs inside, taken by anonymous photographers, as the words and pictures tell a story of pre-independence India.

 

The University of Houston has an original copy of the book in its special collections, one of only four known to exist. But the book was deteriorating: The slick pages are difficult to preserve, and the binding was coming off, said Michelle Reilly, digital projects program director for the University of Houston Digital Library.

 

So the library added India Illustrated to its digital collection ( http://digital.lib.uh.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/p15195coll29 ) over the summer as a way to preserve the rare book and share it more widely. In digitizing the book, the library has put high-resolution images online for the use of anyone with Internet access, anywhere in the world, and saved the paper copy of the book for researchers who for one reason or another need access to it.

 

"The images reflect a more British look to them," Reilly said. "I felt, when I took a look at this book, that just for the social history that it can [reflect] in images, it is outstanding."

 

Some of the landmarks photographed for the book (full title: India Illustrated: Being a Collection of Pictures of the Cities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, Together with a Selection of the Most Interesting Buildings and Scenes Throughout India) were those far more familiar to the country's British ruling class than the Indian populace. Golf and country clubs abound, as do Anglican churches of solid English and Scottish design. The caption for a view of the bay from pastoral Cumballa Hill, now one of Mumbai's most elegant neighborhoods, notes that the causeway visible on one side, part of the Hornby Vellard, which connected the seven islands of Bombay, is "a favourite Sunday evening drive."

 

The book also includes street and country scenes of ordinary life: tinsmiths displaying their wares on the ground, farmers plowing with their oxen, tribesmen in traditional garb, fishermen and washermen at work and a pyre prepared for a Hindu funeral.

 

The images of Bombay, the most-photographed locale in the book, are of a bustling city of nearly 1 million people, still a far cry from the booming modern Mumbai of 14 million. The Madras in the photographs has become Chennai, about 10 times as big with nearly 5 million residents. In both cities, many Victorian-era landmarks shown in the photographs remain, though their surroundings have changed radically.

 

The book also suggests, by implication, that one image of India was already universally known by 1905: the Taj Mahal. Instead of the widely reproduced straight-ahead, symmetrical picture of the Taj, the photo in India Illustrated shows what it calls "An Unconventional View of the Taj," at an extreme angle and partly obscured by the Agra Fort.

 

Reilly said some of her favorite photos show the region's natural beauty - or a carefully groomed version of it, as at the elegant Karachi Gardens.

 

India Illustrated already has gotten attention online in India, Reilly said, and Indian visitors to the library website typically spend time calling up more than 20 photos apiece.

 

Reilly said the images bear close examination. One thing she noticed: The British who appear in the photos invariably wore elaborate layers of clothes despite the hot climate and lack of air conditioning, while other residents wore suitably simple, loose clothing.

 

"You can get a lot out of an image if you really take the time to look at it," she said.

 

The University of Houston, located in the fourth-largest city in the United States, is led by Renu Khator, who holds the distinction of being the first Indian immigrant in charge of a comprehensive research university in the United States, according to the university's website. Khator is the president of the university and chancellor of the University of Houston system.

 

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. )