EMPIRE & FAITH, KINSHIP & WAR:
A Century of Sikh Photographs (1849-1948)
A Unique Set of Rare Photographs Commissioned by SWFF 07
Isabel Bader Theatre
93 Charles Street W,
Toronto, ON
M4Y1V2
Phone: (416) 813-4092
Sikh Prisoner of War World War 1
The history of the Sikh people was sharply bought into a global focus when the East India Company dramatically clashed with the Sikh armies of the state of the Lahore in 1846-7 and 1848-9. The burgeoning empire builders had exhausted many of the expedient policies that allowed them to successively annex state after state in the Indian subcontinent, leaving only the powerful but unstable state of Punjab as one of the last vestiges of local rule. The resultant war of annexation was a bloody and decisive affair, with two major campaigns over three years and consisting of six significant battles. During these two wars a relationship was formed that informed Sikh history for the subsequent 150 years and continues to do so today.
For the Sikh people the events of 1849 mark a turning point in their history as significant as the founding of the faith itself. Punjab was colonised, modernised and christianised. The impact on the society, the people and the faith was dramatic and arguably led to today's massive Sikh diaspora in the UK, USA and Canada. The face of the Sikhs' traditional landscape was changed beyond almost recognition over the next 100 years ushering in the progressive and advanced modern state that is Punjab today. In 1947, almost a century later, the similarly major events of Indian Independence and the bloody partition of the Punjab imparted on the Sikh people yet another marked shift in society.
From the early days of exploration of the two communities, through two bloody colonial wars, reconciliation and the heady days of the Raj to the grim world wars as allies, Sikh history has been played out in front of the photographers lens. The very first grainy photographs taken in the subcontinent were of the characters and palaces that formed the backdrop of the Anglo-Sikh wars just a few years later. Precisely a century later during the bloody partition of Indian independence, celebrated photojournalists such as Margaret Bourke-White captured the mass migration of Sikh and Muslim families during partition and the grim holocausts that followed.
This epic century saw the demise of Sikh sovereignty and the establishment of the British Empire in Punjab followed by the sundering in two of the state itself. The political ramifications of these events cannot be underestimated either in their transformation of the Sikh people or indeed their impact on the Sikh faith and its traditional practices. The societal changes were no less significant with the tearing down of traditional, feudal power structures and the establishment of modern governance from the new state of India. The massive shifts have left an indelible mark on the Sikhs of today and have formed a dramatically altered Sikhism to the faith practised in the pre-colonial milieu.
This exhibition covering one hundred years of Sikh history has the ability to tell that incredibly important story through the medium of photography. During this period as massive political cultural and religious shifts were taking place, a body of visual evidence was being captured on film that both narrates these events and brings to the reader the characters and places that loomed so large in the Punjab of old.
The Punjab was one of the last sovereign states to be annexed by the East India Company. Punjab itself - a collection of a number of individual sovereign states - was one of the richest regions in India. As a result, the splendour of the Sikh regal courts was both opulent and well documented. This exhibition will bring together some of the richest sources of visual material on the romance and the splendour of the Sikh courts of the nineteenth century. Other sections will explore the diversity in the Sikh faith, a fabulously interesting facet of the Sikh community that captured the attention of the colonial anthropologists, missionaries and reformers alike. In sharp contrast to the glory of the Sikh courts and the opulence of Sikh architectural expression, the simple and unpretentious life of the Sikh villagers and their traditional lives and rituals are displayed.
This presentation of a century of Sikh photographs contains some of the most important visual material on the Sikh story. The narrators of this story have already established wide academic credentials with the publication of Warrior Saints: Three Centuries of the Sikh Military Tradition (London: IB Tauris, 1999) and "Sicques, Tigers, or Thieves": Eyewitness Accounts of the Sikhs (1606-1809) (New York: Palgrave, 2004). As researchers living and working within London they have documented and researched a great deal of the material in preparation for an major exhibition that can simultaneously tell the Sikh story and make the vast and rich visual heritage available to a much wider audience with a narrative that can adequately express the gravity of the account.