A PORTRAYAL OF PEOPLE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Public.Resource.Org https://archive.org/details/portrayalofpeoplOOunse A PORTRAYAL OF PEOPLE Essays on Visual Anthropology in India Co-published by ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA INDIAN NATIONAL TRUST FOR ART AND CULTURAL HERITAGE INTACH 71, Lodhi Estate New Delhi-110 003 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA West Block 2, Wing 6, First Floor R.K. Puram New Delhi 110 066. ©ASI, INTACH, 1987. © For individual contributions with authors. Printed at Indraprastha Press (CBT) 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002. CONTENTS Foreword v Introduction ix An Examination of the 1 Need and Potential for Visual Anthropology in India Rakhi Roy and Jayasinhji Jhala Anthropological Survey of 20 India and Visual Anthropology K.S. Singh History of Visual Anthropology 49 in India K.N. Sahay Perceptions of the Self and Other 75 in Visual Anthropology Rakhi Roy and Jayasinhji Jhala My Experiences as a Cameraman 99 in the Anthropological Survey Susanta K. Chattopadhyay The Vital Interface 114 Ashish Rajadhyaksha The Realistic Fictional Film: 127 How far from Visual Anthropology? Chidananda Das Gupta Phaniyamma and the Triumph 139 of Asceticism T.G. Vaidyanathan Images of Islam and Muslims 147 on Doordarshan Iqbal Masud Man in My Films 161 Mrinal Sen/Someshwar Bhowmick The Individual and Society 169 Adoor Gopalakrishnan/Madhavan Kutty Notes on Contributors 174 FOREWORD It has often been said that India lives in many centuries at the same time. The complex network of diversity that stretches across time and space has made India a paradise for anthropologists. Not all of them have come from ab¬ road, or represented a colonial relationship; India’s own achievement in this discipline has been considerable, thanks to the outstanding contribution of individual an¬ thropologists and to the Anthropological Survey of India (ASI). Even in the visual field the range of work seems for¬ midable if one takes into account the non-formal, but nonetheless important, study of communities expressed in the documentary film and the fictional cinema meant for the general public, in addition to the visual records for academia made by the Anthropological Survey of India in its 50-odd films and thousands of still photographs. Many streams have thus contributed to the development of visual anthropology in India which is a relatively nas¬ cent sub-discipline of anthropology. However, the entire range of activity in this area has suffered from many shortcomings. The formal part of vis¬ ual anthropology never received sufficient emphasis to adapt itself to changing technologies constantly simplify¬ ing and improving the work of the filmmaker. The non- formal, addressed to huge audiences, has naturally used technology most suited to its primary purposes of large- scale information and propaganda or entertainment. Even the ASI, after a glorious start, could not keep pace with the advances in technology. It is here that visual an- Foreword vi thropology in the West, being consciously tuned to the im¬ portance of the visual experience within the academic dis¬ cipline, has scored by developing a multiplicity of experi¬ ments with the form of visual anthropology by adopting light-weight cameras and sound-recording equipment of considerable sophistication and low cost. From 16mm to video and now to equipment that is extremely small in size and low in weight, a progressive simplification of the paraphernalia is beginning to make film-making as easy and as solitary an act—-Jean Cocteau’s dream—as writing a book. All you have to know is the language of cinema. The need for taking the Indian experience forward was articulated by Jaysinhji Jhala, an Indian visual an¬ thropologist working at Harvard, who has made a number of ethnographic films in Gujarat and in North¬ east India. INTACH agreed readily to his proposal for an international seminar on visual anthropology. With a similar readiness on the part of the ASI the seminar be¬ came possible. The Anthropological Survey of India, which has emerged as the largest repository of visual materials, came forward to share its experience not only in formulating the plan for the Seminar but also its re¬ sources in organising it. INTACH and ASI are co-spon¬ sors of the seminar and its publications. The ASI seeks to expose its technical experts to the new waves generated in recent years in the field of visual anthropology and looks forward to the experience of the seminar in formulating its own perspective in visual anthropology as part of the larger policy on documentation and dissemination of cul¬ tures. Others who responsed were Dr. Surajit Sinha, Prof. T.N. Madan of the Institute of Economic Growth, Prof. T.K. Oommen of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Prof. K.N. Sahay of Ranchi University, whose advice and help led to the orientation and organisation of the Seminar. It has also been encouraging to note the interest in the Semi- vii Foreword nar among the media concerned with film-making, such as Doordarshan, Films Division, Government of India (one of the world’s largest producers of documentary films), Directors of Film Festivals and independent film directors. It was decided to bring together many perspectives—at present somewhat dispersed—in visual anthropology generated by the Anthropological Survey of India, profes¬ sional anthropologists, filmmakers, etc. In preparing this report on the state of visual anthropology for the Seminar we have amply succeeded. However, one significant di¬ mension that is missing in our effort is the role of the museums of tribal research institutions and some State museums which have done commendable work in build¬ ing up visual documentation on the people of India. The fictional film, not habitually counted among the forms of visual anthropology, has been given a place in the deliber¬ ations of the Seminar. Ashish Rajadhyaksha’s paper at the seminar will deal with it in some detail, and the pre¬ sence of some noted feature filmmakers should help con¬ solidate this extension of the area of interest for visual an¬ thropology. The purpose of the present publication is to provide a glimpse, far from comprehensive, of the state of the art in India on the eve of a gathering of some its outstanding ex¬ ponents from many parts of the world. Kumar Suresh Singh Chidananda Das Gupta Director-General Director (Communications) ASI INTACH . V INTRODUCTION I welcome the initiative taken by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage and the Anthropolog¬ ical Survey of India in organising an International Semi¬ nar on Visual Anthropology at Jodhpur. Although anthropologists have long been utilising vis¬ ual representation—sketches, drawings, still photo¬ graphs, and later, movie cameras—for field research, ‘vis¬ ual anthropology’ emerged as a specialised sub-discipline of anthropology only during the last two decades. Its do¬ main of discourse, however, has still to be clearly defined and the sub-discipline is in a state of‘becoming’. Intensive observation of the activities of a people in the totality of a social and environmental context has been the main method of anthropological field research. Although anthropologists depend primarily upon written represen¬ tation for the communication of what they observe or hear from the people, it is obvious that many aspects of‘face- work’, socially and culturally defined body movements, and organisation of‘social space’ are lost in the process. The still camera, the movie camera and the instruments for sound recording can greatly enlarge the scope for prob¬ ing deeply into the activities and responses of a people, compared to the records based on personal visual mem¬ ory. Photographic and audio-visual cinematographic re¬ cords, however, are not merely mechanical extensions of things which can be seen and heard without the aid of in¬ struments. Appropriate use of still and movie cameras de¬ mands a meaningful combination of the precision of a Introduction x natural-historical approach with humane audio-visual sensitivity about the responses of the people. Experiments have been going on in working out the optimal team work for achieving the desired result: a combined team of an an¬ thropologist and filmmaker; an anthropologist turned into a filmmaker (Rouch), a filmmaker turned into an an¬ thropologist (Flaherty). It is obvious that in these col¬ laborative ventures, either in the form of the meeting of two disciplines in a single person or as a combined team of an anthropologist and a filmmaker, the anthropologist must have a clear knowledge of the possibilities and con¬ straints of the language of film, and the anthropological filmmaker must be familiar with the cumulatively de¬ veloped theoretical and methodological interests in an¬ thropology, particularly with recent trends in ethnog¬ raphic reporting. Anthropologists have often been involved in a debate on whether the discipline aims mainly at scientific generalisations about human societies and cultures or is basically an exercise in the ideographic descriptive integ¬ ration of observed data. I think while the debate con¬ tinues, in practice, anthropologists have learnt to live with a combined endeavour: controlled comparison of ob¬ served data and presentation of ‘thick descriptions’ or portrayals of socially defined activities, probing deeply into the underlying symbolic structure—the world of ‘meaning’ of a group of people. Both anthropologists and filmmakers are in a way fellow-travellers—they are in¬ terested in the perceptive and authentic reconstruction and representation of the reality of the human condition. While fictional filmmakers have to transform written scripts into visual representation, anthropologists trans¬ form visual impressions into written presentations. An¬ thropologists, however, do not have the freedom to crea¬ tively arrange totally imaginary persons and sequences of events in their ethnographic portrayals. They cannot create Apu, Durga and Indir Thakrun and the events pre- xi Introduction sented in the book and film, Pather Panchali.