Royal Rajah

Did this for TimeOut Delhi. A short profile of celebrated photographer Raja Deen Dayal whose works are on display at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts until February:

As a 20-year-old student at Thomson’s Civil Engineering College in Roorkee, Deen Dayal was content sketching plans for roads, buildings and canals. It only happened that, in the final year of his course, the college faculty introduced photography as a subject. That was how Dayal came to be quite prepared when, in 1866, as he sat in his draughtsmans’ office at the Indore Public Works Department, he received the news that all draughtsmen were to be replaced by photographers. It was time for Dayal to shed his drawing instruments, pick up the camera and begin a legendary career of photography.

This fortnight, 200 of Deen Dayal’s photographs will be dusted off and exhibited at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the bulk of them on display for the very first time. The images in Raja Deen Dayal: Studio Archives from the IGNCA Collection range from portraits of Indian royalty to grand shots of monuments. Just like the other non-royal Raja, his exact contemporary Ravi Varma, Deen Dayal skilfully adopted a European technology that Indians had had little access to, became a greatly sought-after artist, and broke a new frontier in the visual capture of nineteenth-century Indian life.

“What made Dayal special was the way in which he photographed monuments and portraiture,” said Jyotindra Jain, the director of the IGNCA, who curated the exhibition along with Pramod Kumar KG. “In his portraiture, he recorded almost the entire lifestyle of the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, Mehboob Ali Khan. The British hired him to photograph 78 monuments in central India, and he became famous because of the manner in which he took them. He’d use a slightly low angle to shoot a monument, so its upper part would appear against the sky. The contours of the monument would be extremely clear. But it wasn’t just Dayal’s talent that won him fame. He combined his skills with a tenacity that ensured his friendship with the high and mighty of that era.”

Deen Dayal used his friendship with Maharaja Tukoji Rao II of Indore to have himself introduced to Sir Henry Daly, the British Agent at Indore. Daly had Dayal appointed the official photographer of the Prince of Wales’ tour of India in 1875. Later, he was appointed official photographer to Viceroy Lord Dufferin. “After that, there was no limit [to the extent of his work],” said Jain. “He scored over British photographers because even they didn’t have that kind of access to maharajas, the upper classes and nobility. Being an Indian, he established a certain rapport with these people, and it reflects in his work that his sitters were much more comfortable with him.” In his fourties, he was appointed court photographer to the Nizam of Hyderabad, who gave him the title Raja.

Dayal worked in a time when the tools of photography were still rudimentary, yet he created some stunning clear visuals. Photographers used glass-plate negatives, which required long exposures and extreme care. Another striking quality is “the quality of performance in his photography”, Jain said. “The people who he photographed were always performing. For example, the Nizam of Hyderabad held a durbar thrice week. He and the visitors would dress up, and there was a certain hierarchy [of who followed whom]. The whole scenario was almost a theatre backdrop, in front of which these people performed. Deen Dayal understood this element of performance he was photographing and that drama comes out very well in his photographs.” No wonder then that his patron the Nizam composed a couplet in praise of Dayal: “Ajab yeh karte hain tasvir mein kamaal kamaal/ Ustaadon ke hain ustad yeh Raja Deen Dayal [In the art of photography, surpassing all/a master of masters is Raja Deen Dayal].”

Crawling around in Nizamuddin

Did a version of this for the TimeOut Delhi magazine as part of their cover story on Eid/Ramzan food. One of my most enjoyable assignments till date.

In his famous travelogue of Delhi, City of Djinns, William Dalrymple writes that the sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya would eat little, unable to bear the sight of starving people sleeping in the streets around him. The neighbourhood around his grave is still a beacon for Delhi’s homeless, but also for visitors with great appetites for kebabs and for qawwali.

During Ramzan, the area’s forking bylanes are filled more than ever with the smells of roasting meat. But listening to qawwali – essentially what “going to Nizamuddin” means in Delhi parlance – is less of an option. The roza is a time of sombre abstinence, and after the lifting of the fast, the Nizami family gives over their dusk singing hour to the reading of the Quran. For that reason, to visit Nizamuddin during Ramzan is to get a sense of the direction in which the neighbourhood may be headed, as a lodestone of Sufism in North India slowly gives over to the sway of more orthodox Islam.

The erosion of Sufi culture from Nizamuddin, where it has thrived for seven hundred years, is largely due to the rise of the Tablighi Jamaat, an international reformist Muslim movement that does not appreciate the company of syncretic Sufism. The Tablighis, who function out of a mosque near the Nizamuddin police thana, run several schools in the area. In contrast, the Nizami family – which claims descent from the saint himself – have grown aloof, locals say. They’ve given back too little to the community, building no schools or hospitals, despite the money dropped by visitors at the shrine. “On the pretext of conducting special prayers, the khadims [dargah attendants] extract money from visitors and pocket the cash,” said filmmaker Yousuf Sayeed, who has researched the life of Nizamuddin Auliya. “There’s never any money to maintain the 800-year-old shrine, so it’s in a bad state.” Recently, the Agha Khan Foundation was entrusted with the massive and controversial task of restoring the shrine to its former glory. They’ve restored the saint’s baoli (step-well), but restoring his true influence is not part of their mandate.

That might just fall to young locals like Sufi Kamaal Hassan Shah, convenor of the Jalali and Rifai Sufi Order Group. During Ramzan, Shah organises private qawwali nights, where they pray, experiment with zikr, smoke chillam and – of course – tuck into those tasty kebabs. Shah’s gatherings welcome visitors with an appreciation for the ethos and the music (which is usually qawwals sung in Bengali). For visitors who are less adventurous, or just seeking respite from the madding crowd and the late-monsoon humidity, it can be found in the air-conditioned interior of the local branch of Karim’s. It rides on the reputation of the Karim’s at Jama Masjid, so prepare your tastebuds for sikandari raan, burra kabab and other Karim’s-popularised meats. 

But the smaller restaurants of Nizamuddin are equally welcoming (and far more reasonably priced). No sooner has the muezzin signalled the end of roza, the fasting period, than floods of young men throng Nasir Iqbal Restaurant to devour its delicately spiced mutton qorma (Rs 60). The rough-edged Ghalib’s eatery has a following greatly out of proportion with its size, mostly thanks to its soft, mouth-watering beef shammi kababs (Rs 25). Diners who prefer their meat tough and crunchy should head to Yaseen’s Kebab Corner, which specialises in crunchy fried chicken (Rs 50 per piece) and roasted beef tikkas, locally called “bade ka meat”. Here, in the space between the Tablighi mosque and the dargah, it briefly doesn’t matter if you’re a puritan or a Sufi, a rozedaar (fast-keeper) or a lapsed Muslim or not a Muslim at all – if you have an appetite, you can believe Nizamuddin is paradise.