S.Kalidas' Archive

Life Between the Lines

By S. Kalidas

Britsh rule contained the tribal regions of the Northeast between two lines: The McMahon Line and the Inner Line. The first demarcated colonial India’s border with Tibet and the other kept the ‘mainstream’ people of the plains of India from over-running the indigenous communities and safeguarding them from ‘foreign’ influences. After independence, Prime Minister Nehru set up the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) on the advice of anthropologist Verrier Elwin and continued the policy of ‘protective isolation’.  How well either of the lines served its purpose can be a subject of much debate but the policy ensured that these areas remain at best exotic and unknown for the rest of the country.

Since 2002, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, has been conducting a five-year project to document the dynamics of cultural change among the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh.  The first small sample of their work has just been put on show by the British Council at Delhi’s Crafts Museum (Dec 7-26). The exhibition, aptly titled Tribal Transitions, comprises of some absolutely riveting photographs shot by Michael Aram Tarr in the last three years. More interestingly, they have been juxtaposed with pictures that got taken during the few recorded encounters that the British Raj had with the hapless tirbals between 1862 and 1945. The show also has a few rather hastily collected crafts objects on display that have little relevance to the show other than perhaps to justify its location in the Crafts Museum.

Other than Sunil Jana in the 1960s and Pablo Bartholomew two decades later, few Indian lensmen have done any significant work with tribal cultures. For that reason alone Tarr’s muse puts him a rarefied category. But that is not to apologise for the aesthetic worth his frames. Tarr has just the eye for the picture that tells more that the proverbial “hundred lines” and lends itself to readings well beyond the anthropological. Seeing the exhibits one cannot but reflect that tribal traditions maintain amazing elements of continuity. Whether it is the communal building of the bamboo bridge across a river or the pattern of the textiles they use, Tarr traces the placid trajectory of transition with a benign and rapturous gaze. A very significant show indeed, for both the ethnographer and the photography buff .  The show will travel to Kolkata and Itanagar, and eventually to the British Museum, London.