Term Paper

Course: Studying Indian Cinemas

Semester 2
Instructor: Prof. Nikhila H.
Submitted by Sachindev P S

Review of Literature: Preparation for a Visual Anthropological Study of Empire Films

Introduction

Since 1900, the British has made numerous films on India and its people, like they have done
in their other colonies. These are now collectively called Empire Films or Colonial Films.
There are about 6000 films in total and around 150 of them are available to watch online. In
these are ‘films of record’ (non-fiction) and ‘the art of film’ (fiction). . Empire films have
been preserved by a joint effort from Birkbeck and University College London and archives -
British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum and the British Empire and Commonwealth
Museum. Colonial films serves as the first images of India as a magical land full of mystery,
violence and danger. They created stereotypes of spaces and people, which are still in
circulation and continue to influence the visual representations of the East. This paper is
dealing with the films made on India. The trend of filming Indian ‘subjects’ flourished in the
following decades and continued up to 1945. There are a number of travel documentaries,
ethnographic documentaries, and feature films produced by the British and Hollywood in this
set of films. Coinciding this phenomenon is the rise of anthropology. By the 1920s,
anthropology was getting established as a discipline in the West and Margeret Mead and
Branislaw Malinowsky had published their seminal works. Therefore there was a general
impetus for anthropological exploration for the colonisers, and some of their media projects
had the aura of scientific curiosity and a lot of them were propaganda vehicles. In these films,
the manifestation of ‘the other’ is carried out in so many different ways; in most films this
treatment includes demonising the native, placing the British as the virtuous and thus carrying
the ‘white man’s burden’, or a combination of both. For a visual anthropological study of
these films to see how the anthropological curiosity has defined the image, the first step is to
collect information about what external factors were at play in the making and reception of
these films, and to enquire the reasons why filmmakers/producers chose the topics they did.
For this purpose and to understand how the racial gaze has shaped the narrative, and how the
establishment of ‘the uncivilised other’ has helped turn these films into propaganda tools, a
review of books written on Empire films should help. This paper moves through three films,
and literature written on them. The first film is The Relief of Lucknow 1912, produced by the
Edison Company. This is probably an early docu-drama, about how the rebellion in Lucknow
was contained by Gen. Havelock’s troops. Priya Jaikumar in her essay “Insurgent Place as
Visual Space: Location Shots and Rival Geographies of 1857 Lucknow” provides a
comprehensive account regarding the production of space in her essay on the film. The
second film is The Drum, a fiction of feature length, starring Indian and British actors. This
film was made to deliver the propaganda message that it takes the British to contain the
rebellion and ensure peace in the North Western Frontier Province. Prem Chowdhry has
written extensively about the film in her book Colonial India and the Making of Empire
Cinema: Image, Ideology, and Identity. The third film is an informational film about the city
of Bikaner. Titled Bikaner, and made in 1934, this film covers the geographical specificities,
lifestyle of the people, and ends with a short description of the ruling prince, Ganga Singh.
The attempt is to analyse the film using information on the colonialfilm.org archive, and see
if this film shares any of the patterns that other two films have. Thus we have a fiction, a non-
fiction, and a semi-fiction to try and develop a preliminary grounding for a visual
anthropological study of Empire films.

The Relief of Lucknow

Understanding how India as a space was constructed is essential to develop context for a
visual anthropological study of these films. Before the attempt to understand what happened,
it might be better to understand ‘where’ it happened. By ‘where’, I mean not just the
geographical locations shown in the film, but the filmic space. To begin, I refer to Priya
Jaikumar’s work on colonial films to understand the various contexts these films operated in.
In her essay Insurgent Place as Visual Space: Location Shots and Rival Geographies of 1857
Lucknow, she is dealing with precisely this aspect of colonial films. To represent space would
mean the existence of real place and the distortion of it in the film and the geographical space
is re-presented. Space is not just geographical space but it is about the way in which social
relations are created in and through space. And in the process, it acquires a certain political
character, mostly in favour of who is producing the film. This is where space becomes
social-spatial. So when the The Lucknow Album (an album of photographs of Lucknow
published in 1874, which Jaikumar is juxtaposing with the film) was put together, it wasn’t in
favour of the British completely. The monuments were an evidence of Mughal past that
existed in the British present and these photographs carried descriptions of the functions each
building (now monument) had in the cityscape. So, in The Relief of Lucknow the film, we
don’t see the city or its monuments. A different space is created in the film to pass off as
Lucknow, the film in reality being shot in Bermuda. The way a space is acknowledged and
understood through social relations is what gives the space meaning. That is why Jaikumar
says sociality leads to spatiality. It is about how spatiality is configured through social
interactions within the film and with that of the audience. The social here creates the spatial.
Visuals are also ‘distancing’ as it gets you closer to the space. Jaikumar is not concerned
about misrepresentation here. Production of space has nothing to do with space out there, in
this case, Lucknow. It is about creating meaning within the ambit of film but then what the
audience see in it will become their idea of that particular space, so it is not a futile exercise.
Such a production of space has a purpose in the imperialist context, where they are delivering
an idea about what this particular land and people represent. This is the space where the
narrative unfolds. Adding to this aspect of space is the portrayal of Indian mutineers as
opposed to East India Company’s men.

In the film The Relief of Lucknow, the British has portrayed themselves as dutiful men in the
face of danger. It is made for the rest of the world, in an effort to sustain and assert the
necessity of the imperial project as they have done time and again. And it is not a surprise, as
the film is produced by the Edison company, directed by Serle J. Dawley who made The
Charge of the Light Brigade in Cheyenne, Wyoming in which Battle of Balaclava became a
tale of British heroism. In The Relief of Lucknow, Indians are always coming in groups except
in one scene, where the British officer dismisses the Indian servant after he has finished
serving them the drinks. And these groups of Indian mutineers, evokes the archetype of the
violent ‘early man’, in the sense that they seem rather disorganised and they seem to scatter
around where they are attacking. Whereas in the end of the film, when Havelock’s troop
finally arrives, it’s a disciplined group. But these were sepoys trained in combat too. So it
could be said that the makers don’t waste any opportunity to showcase the native barbarity.

The sites of attack are also significant. The mutineers attack the British when they are at their
Sunday Service, implicating that this is an attack on their lifestyle, beliefs, and values. This
attack on the church is a classic example of how propaganda is sewed into the narrative of
empire films. Another significant site is the burial of Sir Henry Lawrence, who was shot by
the rebels in his office. The rebels don’t even spare a funeral, according to the British. In
another scene, when a few soldiers are arguing about who will volunteer to risk their life, the
Pastor comes and encourages the man who seemed most passionate. The Church is actively
endorsing violence here, and it is portrayed as a necessity and thus perfectly justified.
Therefore there is a tying of religion and the acts of war. In the feature film The Drum, we
will see the British calling out the presence of religion in the lives of Muslim rebels. This is
done through dialogues and by placing the crucial moments in the narrative around rituals.
This is discussed in detail in later part of this paper. In The Relief of Lucknow , there is an
instance where the British man who volunteered is tasked with infiltrating the mutineer’s
camp. He tries to penetrate the mutineer’s hideout by disguising as a Sepoy. But he fails as
the Sepoys chase him away instantly. It is intended to further assert the British’s initial failure
to counter the rebellion, but it also implies their inability to transform into one of the natives,
thus reinforcing their image of the alien, who succeeds in the end of the film, though the
mutiny ended the British East India Company’s rule in 1857 and British Crown took over the
control of the subcontinent.

The Drum

In her book Cinema at the End of Empire: A Politics of Transition in Britain and India,
Jaikumar says “cinema’s late colonial period embodied the ambiguities, possibilities, and
fears generated by two historical paradoxes: that of colonialism’s moral delegitimation before
its political demise and that of its persistence in shaping modern postcolonial societies well
after the end of formal empire”. In 1927, the Cinematograph Films Act a.k.a. Quota Act was
initiated by the British government to ensure the market for British Empire Films, A film like
The Drum (1938) is a result of awareness of the Empire’s impending demise, careful
amendments were made as to not to hurt the ‘Indian sentiments’. The many thematic
restrictions put forward by The Public and Judicial Department of Britain included:

3: Those in which Indian religion or social customs are brought into ridicule or contempt, for
example, films tending to over emphasise the backwardness of certain classes of people or
giving undue importance to social abuses or primitive customs, which are not fairly
representative of India as a whole.
5: Those which generally depict Indians as an inferior race, with a ‘slave mentality’, cringing
and dominated by a superior white race.

But then the film was met with protest, and therefore hardly any market. The theme of The
Drum was essentially divisive in nature, placing the British on a high pedestal both in terms
of values, and valour. We can observe early efforts at demonising the Pathans of the North
West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), the land of Pashtun. Prem Chowdhry, in
her book Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema, puts this film in perspective. She
uses Stuart Hall’s model of encoding/decoding to provide an initial understanding of how
Indian audience had a hand in shaping the Empire narratives. In Stuart Hall’s model,
Chowdhry thinks ‘the oppositional’ (of dominant, negotiated or oppositional), the mode of
decoding where the audience understands but rejects the reading and often endeavour to bring
an alternative code, is the defining stance that Indian audience took towards Empire films
from the 1930s. The Drum, was met with violent protest in Mumbai. Empire films, as
exemplified by The Drum, were not just filmic materialisations of ‘white man’s burden’, as
Chowdhry writes, “the empire films can be seen to encompass a complex weave of
ideologies. They aim to demolish the nationalistic rhetoric of One India, emphasis its
heterogeneity and disparity. They also strive to indicate potential social and political
disruptions in India which can be controlled only by the British presence”. This effort to
claim a certain authority is a trait common in most Empire films, also one of the many ways a
coloniser asserts and justifies the imperial project. There are a few aspects of the film
Chowdhry doesn’t go into in detail. The rituals, for example. She mentions the scenes in the
film where the Pathans (Muslims) are offering their prayers which are intercut with scenes of
violence. In one of the early scenes, the British officer who puts Gen. Carruthers in charge of
the NWFP, says “A few fanatical priests screaming of a holy war”, which is complemented
by Carrathurs “a few fanatical priests with machine guns with teams trained in modern war
tricks”. This impression of the British is furthered by the portrayal of Pathan Muslims as
religious, and them choosing the day of Muhram to assassinate Gen. Carruthers and take over
control. In anthropology, rituals are indicators of social behaviour with a specific cultural
meaning. By tying the ritual and violence, The Drum manages to paint a picture of Pathans as
a violent mob who are motivated and justified by religion. This tethering of religion and
violence is at the heart of British ‘divide and rule’ policy and is carried out in the narrative of
the film.
The western obsession with the orient, the curiosity and the hegemonic approach to studying
the tribes and ‘uncivilised’ is well documented. In a lot of popular media, films especially, be
it an African tribe or the Pathan of NWFP, they are always shown in awe of the white man.
This is established in many ways. Prince Azim in the film The Drum, is so eager to establish
friendship with the British resident Gen. Carruthers, he fancies the drum the little white boy
in the band, later learning a tune from him by offering to be friends. This is despite having the
drum in their own culture, a bigger one at that. So why should the prince be so curious about
a little drum when he has seen bigger, and probably better ones? More than an inaccuracy, it
could be read as an effort to show that the prince is finding his freedom with the British, as
they are a more liberal lot than the prince’s family. This fascination that the native has
towards the encroacher, is constructed to serve the imperial agenda. The anthropological
curiosity is present in both parties, but it is always posited in such a way as to favour the
West, by subordinating the orient. In The Drum, the prince is yearning to try on the uniform
of his British friend. When it comes to the British however, they seem to be perfectly
knowledgeable about the Indian ways. When Gul Khan reproves one of his associates for
burping and apologizes to Carruthers, the general understandingly says that he knows it is
admissible in India to burp and that he has no problem with it. The film presents the English
as anthropologically savvy, them knowing the many nuances of the Pathan culture, and
Indian in general. Whereas Gul Khan finds women dancing with men at a ball in Britain
repulsive. So though the curiosity about the other is equally present in both parties, it is
always presented in a manner asserting the superiority of the coloniser. And this is often
achieved visually, using props, as we see in The Drum.

Bikaner
Bikaner was produced by the instructional division of Gaumont-British Picture Corporation
in 1934 for the educational market. The film was one of the many shorts in the Secrets of
India series, and the title says the film is part of ‘Indian Town Studies’. The crew consisted of
S. R. Bonnet and V. Veevers, who were supervised by G. J. Cons, then head of Geography
Department at Goldsmiths College. This short, as you have seen, begins with a map, intended
to give the audience a sense of the location. Interestingly, The Drum also begins with a map.
The use of maps in these two films indicate that they are both made for non-Indian audience,
to whom the message of British supremacy and that of its necessity is delivered. It is notable
how the narrative treated the Prince. Here is an excerpt from the description of the film from
colonialfilms.org:
Ganga Singh was well known to British dignitaries and politicians. He attended King
Edward’s coronation in 1902; was the only non-Anglo member of the British War Cabinet in
World War I; and represented India at the Imperial War Conference in 1917. His
commitment to the British raj was displayed by the adoption of their favoured Indo-Saracenic
style for his Lalgarh Palace in Bikaner (Ramusack, 2004, 148). His brusque manner was
nevertheless not always welcomed by the British authorities (Copland, 1997, 48-49).
Moreover, his advanced statesmanship should be balanced against a punitive and
authoritarian mode of rule. Civil liberty was severely restricted in his state, culminating in a
notorious case in which seven people received long sentences for daring to criticise the
administration (Singh, 1970, 48-51). He also possessed overriding powers that curtailed the
usefulness of his Representative Assembly (Singh, 1970, 90-92).

For someone who was so familiar, and powerful, the documentary gives the prince little
attention, and ensures to note his loyalty to the British. According to Prem Chowdhry,
“propaganda films focusing on developmental aspects such as irrigation, agriculture,
education and industrial progress in India had no audience”. However, one needs to find out
information about the viewership of these films in Britain and elsewhere. The film has all the
elements of a film about the exotic land, India. The snake charmers, camels, ingenious
irrigation system, and not to forget, the cows which the narrator says are sacred animals and
are free to roam as they please. And yet, the city is not entirely primitive, there are motorcars
to spot, and the prince is dressed in British military costume. Now, this is a non-fiction
account of a city, and yet it is so full of visual stereotypes.

Maurizio Cinquegrani writes, “early travel films of India contributed to bringing Indian
cityscapes within the British imagination of the colonized territories, and they did so by
focusing on everyday views of native individuals and activities in exotic and potentially
threatening places”. This is quite applicable in the case of Bikaner. The informational Empire
films are shot by amateurs as well as film companies, and they shot these films to show their
friends in Britain, or for educational purposes. So they turn India into an object of study,
mostly anthropological. The gaze gets established here. For example, in their coronation
films, The Indian kings bow before the queen. It such a show of supremacy and it is
documented elaborately. This was nothing but optics of power. In these films, the British
were producing a conquered space. India as a space and its people as an exotic population is
something that prevails in the mainstream films and media, and ripples of this is felt in the
ethnographic endeavours undertaken by the Indian government since independence. To quote
Ann Stoler, “there was an ‘‘embourgeoisement’’ of empire during the period of ‘‘high’’ or
‘‘late’’ colonialism ‘‘enhanced expectations of hard work, managed sexuality, and racial
distancing among the colonial agents,’’ as the British State invented an administrative and
educational machinery to discipline imperial officials as well as include colonial subjects in
the work of empire-maintenance”.

Conclusion

All this is taking place after the 1857 mutiny, which was a staple for British literature for
decades to come. By the end of 19th century, the British had somewhat succeeded in laying
the foundation for their imperial projects, the geo-political boundaries, the administrative
system, and so on, and was very close to having a ‘world-system’ in place. The British
established their legitimacy after containing the mutiny, and this authority is reflected in these
films. In many ways they kept asserting the racial superiority. Sometimes it is done through a
show of their technological advancement, sometimes it is sophistication of etiquette, or
altruistic intentions. Gautam Chakravarthy, in his book The Indian Mutiny and British
Imagination, explains how there was already an Anglo-Indian literary culture that furthered
the colonial cause in India. He writes “It was specifically the conquest of Punjab and Sind
over the 1840s that helped to design a potent and fashionable Anglo-Indian sub-culture of the
frontier hero or Punjab administrator over the next hundred years or so: a gloomy ‘berserker’
spirit leading irregular corps to ‘pacify’ Waziristan or Chitral on the Afghan border, or
carrying out administrative and judicial settlements from Lahore with a mix of evangelical
dourness and liberal-reformist energy”. The Drum is essentially carrying out this mission.
While The Relief of Lucknow tries to reconstruct history in their favour, The Drum takes it a
level up, by exalting the British intervention. Bikaner provides us a picture of the approach
taken by the imperialists in their effort to legitimise their presence in India. The studies
undertaken by Priya Jaikumar, Prem Chowdhry, Cinquerani, and Chakravarthy, are
sociological, historical or literary in nature. They don’t necessarily look into the
anthropological aspect of Empire cinema, as that was not their intention, but nevertheless
provides information and context for a visual anthropological study. Nicholas Dirk said
“colonialism is a cultural project of control”. And it is safe to assume that Empire cinema was
the most potent tool in this project, and therefore, there is ample scope for a visual study of
these films.

References

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Pelican Book. 1972

Baker, Robin Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire.

http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/home Bikaner, Mediatheque, BFI, London.

Chakravarthy, Gautam. The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination. Cambridge, UK.
Cambridge University Press, 2005. PDF

Chowdhry, Prem. Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology, and
Identity. Manchester. Manchester University Press. 2000. Print

Cinquegrani,Maurizio (2012). Travel Cinematography and the Indian City: The Imperial
Spectacle of Geography at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century. Nineteenth-Century
Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal. London. Routledge.

Fabian, Johannes. Times and the Other: How Antropology Makes its Object. Columbia
University Press. 2014.

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books 2000

Hockings, Paul. Principles of Visual Anthropology. Mouton De Gruyter. 1995.

Jaikumar, Priya (2014) “Insurgent Place as Visual Space: Location Shots and Rival
Geographies of 1857 Lucknow”. Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space, eds. Bean Jennifer
M., Kapse Anupama, Horak Laura. Indiana. Indiana University Press.

Jaikumar, Priya. Cinema at the End of Empire : A Politics of Transition in Britain and India.
Duke University Press. Durham and London. 2006
Mead, Margeret. Bateson, Gregory. Bali. A Photographic Analysis. New York Academy of
Sciences. 1942.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. How to see the World. Penguin UK. 2015.

Skaria Ajay. Some Aporias of History: Time Truth and Play in Dangs, Gujarat. Economic
and Political Weekly April 10, 1999.

Stoler, Ann Laura, and Frederick Cooper, eds. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a
Bourgeois World. University of California Press. 1997.