Paper short abstract:

An engagement with the visual and inter-cultural significance of an Adivasi leader, as pertaining to issues of memory, autonomy and representation.

Paper long abstract:

In the late-nineteenth century, the subaltern and Adivasi (indigenous/tribal) leader Birsa Munda was photographed as a captive of the colonial state in Ranchi district, central India. His portrait has since been re-interpreted, re-inscribed and re-used in diverse anthropological, regionalist and nationalist contexts. These processes point to the intersecting of a range of visual idioms, materials and sensibilities. How these have become efficacious across social, mnemonic and curatorial fields that are not necessarily characterized by an affinity with Munda heritage or Adivasi values is of anthropological significance. The paper will argue that a new conceptualisation of Birsa's 'presence' is required as a means of broaching the inter-temporality of the image(s) and histories under consideration. It addresses the slippages and overlaps between competing notions of time - insurgent versus counter-insurgent; ancestral versus lived; cultural versus political - that adhere in the image and its afterlives. The work will question how the milieu of 'Indian' anthropology, exemplified by S.C. Roy, informed the early phases of the photograph's afterlife, and prompted new nationalist artistic imaginings of 'the Mundas' as a civilizational rather than a primordial social entity.