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Picturing Muharram: Images of a

Colonial Spectacle, 1870–1915
a
Rianne Siebenga
a
Utrecht University
Published online: 24 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Rianne Siebenga (2013) Picturing Muharram: Images of a Colonial
Spectacle, 1870–1915, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 36:4, 626-643, DOI:
10.1080/00856401.2013.836069

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 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2013
Vol. 36, No. 4, 626–643, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2013.836069

Picturing Muharram: Images of a Colonial

Spectacle, 1870–1915

RIANNE SIEBENGA, Utrecht University

The festival of Muharram had a central place in British colonial discourses on India as it was
both a site of fascination and fear. While in textual discussions the fearsome aspect invariably
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came to the fore, in contemporaneous images of Muharram on magic lantern slides, on

postcards or in film, fear was rarely depicted, although Muharram was never shown as being
out of colonial control. Images tended to focus on Muharram as an attractive spectacle, with
fear often located in the accompanying text. Between 1870 and 1915, the heyday of the Raj,
visual economies in postcards and in film oversaw a transformation in representations of
Muharram, in which the fear was displaced and the spectacle took centre stage, offering a
fresh discourse around Muharram.
Keywords: Muharram; British colonial discourses; visual economies; magic lantern slides;
postcards; film

Introduction
All the processions. . .were now well within the City walls. The drums beating afresh,
the crowd were howling ‘Ya Hassan! Ya Hussain!’ and beating their breasts, the brass
bands were playing their loudest, and at every corner where space allowed,
Mohamedan preachers were telling the lamentable story of the death of the Martyrs. It
was impossible to move except with the crowd.1

Rudyard Kipling’s description here of the Muharram rituals probably captured the atmosphere
of the Ashura rituals quite well. Muharram commemorates the deaths of the Muslim martyrs
Hassan and Hussain (the sons of the fourth caliph, Ali) and was (and still is) an important
religious festival in many Indian cities, ending with large processions through the town on the
day of Ashura. Although rendered with a level of sympathy, Kipling’s description is squarely
located within a colonial prism. He had forewarned his readers that Muharram was an
occasion for riots between Hindus and Muslims, and when these duly occur later in his story,
Kipling has British men abandoning the safety of their club to rescue the overwhelmed police
and restore order.
The story both reiterates and is exemplary of narratives in other colonial accounts of
Muharram which combine fascination with fear. This fear was partly based on the ‘frenzy’
that accompanied the processions, which supposedly made participants lose all reason. This

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, the editor of South Asia and Professor Frank Kessler for their
pertinent and helpful comments on this paper.
1
R. Kipling, ‘On the City Wall’, Twenty One Tales Selected from the Works of Rudyard Kipling (London:
MacMillan, [1888] 1946), p.30.

Ó 2013 South Asian Studies Association of Australia

 Picturing Muharram 627

fear anticipated and heightened the sensitivity to the riots that occasionally occurred during
Muharram. British administrators considered Muslims to be generally prone to violence, and
the festival’s large crowds of excitable mourners were thought to exacerbate this
characteristic.2
At the same time that Kipling published his story in 1888, visual images of Muharram
were being conveyed to a large public in Britain and beyond through magic lantern lectures, a
slideshow of images presented in concert with an accompanying text. By the turn of the
century, the popularity of the picture postcard and film had disseminated images of Muharram
even further. Magic lantern shows were given on fairgrounds by showmen, and also in town
halls and university halls, reaching a very diverse public. The same holds true for films, at this
stage still silent, which before the advent of specific ‘picture houses’ were shown in the same
spaces and frequently in conjunction with magic lantern slideshows.3 Postcards were sent,
received and collected by all levels of society worldwide.4 These images collectively played
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an important role in representing India to the rest of the world, and it is with this
representation that this article is concerned. Interestingly, in the course of my research,
virtually all the images I have seen can be placed within a British colonial frame of reference,
even if the producers of the images were non-British, as in the case of film companies such as
Pathe (French), Edison (American) and Ambrosio (Italian).
When picturing India and Indians, the emphasis was not on originality, but rather on
familiarity: on replicating the already known ‘India’. For the British in India, and also through
their writings in Britain and much of the rest of the non-colonised world, Muharram was one
of the best-known religious events on the subcontinent. Consequently, Muharram is the only
religious festival in India, either Muslim or Hindu, to be consistently depicted in all the visual
media discussed here. Lantern readings regularly discussed charak puja (‘hook-swinging’, as
the British called it), and the Jagannath festival at Puri, yet postcards and films rarely showed
either.5 In film, the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad is one of the few Hindu festivals to be given a
specific name and location. The Muslim celebration Eid-al-Fitr is mentioned a few times on
postcards, and I found one example in film, but none of the other major festivals such as
Diwali, Holi or Eid-al-Bakr seem to have been portrayed, nor any of the festivals or large
ceremonies of other religious groups such as those of the Sikhs, Parsis or Jains. This adds
significance to the images of Muharram as the festival came to stand for much more than just

2
T. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.138–44.
3
X.T. Barber, ‘The Roots of Travel Cinema: John L. Stoddard, E. Burton Holmes and the Nineteenth-Century
Illustrated Travel Lecture’, in Film History, Vol.5, no.1 (1993), pp.68–84. The British film company Walturdaw
marketed its films and its lantern slides of its India tour in The Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal
(Sept. 1906), p.228.
4
For example, the India Office Records at the British Library hold the postcard albums of Josephine Eppes,
sister-in-law to Sir J.H. Maynard, who worked in the Indian Civil Service in the Punjab and who certainly was a
member of the upper crust (India Office select materials, photo 867). On eBay a postcard collection for sale
came from John White, a private from Doncaster, who did service in India from 1907–12, and who upon his
return worked as a crane driver for the railways (correspondence with vendor, 3 Mar. 2011).
5
Both hook-swinging and the Jagannath festival became tropes of Indian savagery for the British. Hook-
swinging had been banned all over India by 1894, and so does not appear on postcards or in films. See G.A.
Oddie, Popular Religion, Elites and Reforms: Hook-Swinging and its Prohibition in Colonial India 1800–1894
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1995). The Jagannath festival, which was extensively written about by missionaries in
the early nineteenth century, ‘lost some of its interest in the late nineteenth century as the rumours about human
sacrifices lost plausibility’. See Ravi Ahuja, ‘The “Bridge-Builders”: Some Notes on Railways, Pilgrimage and
the British Civilizing Mission in Colonial India’, in H. Fischer-Tine and M. Mann (eds), Colonialism as
Civilizing Mission: Cultural Ideology in British India (London: Anthem Press 2004), p.104.
 628 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

its ceremonies. To a non-Indian public it came to represent the way in which Indians expressed
their religious experiences.
The visual images of Muharram concentrate on the processions Kipling described, but
differed in several important aspects from the textual image he created. First of all, in the
images there was generally far less space to carry text that might anchor the image to colonial
discourses.6 As a writer, Kipling’s observations of Muharram were translated to text at his
leisure, whereas the process of capturing Muharram for makers of still or moving
photographic images was much more dynamic. While photographers might be able to
determine where and when to take their photographs, they could not entirely orchestrate the
content of the images of Muharram processions.
The images in these media therefore differ from textual accounts of Muharram, but also
from British paintings from the early nineteenth century. In her article ‘Abject to Object’,
Rebecca Brown discusses the significant contrast between the static and controlled paintings
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of the procession, and the colonial writings focusing on riots and frenzy.7 She notes her initial
surprise at the complete absence of ‘city spaces’ in the paintings: the processions seem to take
place in empty landscapes. By contrast, colonial writings always discuss the consequences of
the ‘transgression’ of city spaces in the form of the riots that often coincided with Muharram.8
In one of the paintings discussed by Brown, a large number of people are present, but they are
so ordered that they seem to have been ‘poured into a pre-existing mould for easy display’.9
Brown argues that since the Muharram processions were seen as ‘primary examples of spatial
and social transgression in colonised India’,10 the paintings of Muharram are not solely a
representation of Muharram, but are equally an attempt to deal with the ‘deeper challenge to
the very stability of colonialism’.11 She concludes:

The dynamic threat to the position of the coloniser which, when represented by that
coloniser, must not only be objectified, but de-abjectified, [led] to the controlled,
orderly image of the mid-nineteenth century julus (tabut procession) and the tales of
triumphant and necessary British control of a transgressive annual ceremony.12

As abject, Muharram is considered to be simultaneously attractive and repulsive, and it is this

fascinating combination that threatens the British presence and British legitimacy. This is a
fascination that could break down the barrier between the coloniser and the colonised.13 In
their efforts to order the representations of Muharram, the British attempted to bring the
fascination itself under control.

6
Roland Barthes argues that text is often used to push the viewer into a certain direction of understanding when
looking at an image. The text is then an expression of a society’s values and interests. See Roland Barthes,
Image, Music, Text (trans. S. Head) (Glasgow: William Collins and Sons, 1977), pp.38–41.
7
Rebecca Brown, ‘Abject to Object. Colonialism Preserved Through the Imagery of Muharram’, in RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics, Vol.43 (2003), pp.203–17. Brown’s argument is based on a number of paintings
she has seen in the India Office Library and elsewhere (p.216). Two paintings have been reproduced in her
article, one from the 1780s on p.217 and one from the 1820s on p.204. The earlier painting is livelier, but Brown
argues that the later image becomes representative for all Muharram imagery throughout the nineteenth century
(p.216). Another image she refers to can be seen in M. Archer, Company Paintings, Indian Paintings of the
British Period (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992), pp.85, 86.
8
Brown, ‘Abject to Object. Colonialism Preserved Through the Imagery of Muharram’, pp.206–7.
9
Ibid., p.206.
10
Ibid., p.203.
11
Ibid., p.204.
12
Ibid., p.216. Tabuts are models of the tombs of Hussain and Hassan, tall, elaborately-decorated structures.
13
Ibid., p.215.
 Picturing Muharram 629

This article will demonstrate that the images and discourses in magic lanterns, postcards
and films were rather different. While the procession and the tabuts continued to be central,
the images of these processions tended to be set in the city streets, rather than in open fields;14
and from this follows a second change: from organised dispersed groups of people to dense
crowds. Yet what is still largely absent is a scene where Muharram is portrayed as out of
control. While descriptions of film mention ‘mock fights’, the lamentation, in which
participants mourned by hitting themselves with iron implements, is never mentioned.15 A
very simple reason for these differences is that these images were photographed rather than
painted: there is always a ‘trace’ or ‘imprint’ of what was in front of the camera in the
photograph,16 as Christopher Pinney states when he describes the difference between a
painting and a photograph: ‘[i]f we think of the painter’s imagination and brush as a filter
capable of complete exclusion, then the lens of the camera can never be closed for something
extraneous will always enter it’.17
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Even though it was not possible to entirely invent the image with a camera, the framing of
the image became an important form of creating control.18 Taking the picture could satisfy the
fascination for what was in front of the camera, while the framing then provided the
boundaries of the image. An often-used technique was to take the image from above,
positioning the viewer in such a way as to provide an elevated view of what was seen,
suggesting control over the situation.19 Therefore, the change of medium certainly had
implications for what was portrayed, but, as will be shown, in itself cannot fully explain the
differences in modes of representation.
The danger Muharram posed and the attendant need for control were central to both early
textual discourse and the paintings. However, this danger loses much of its significance in
later images. In magic lantern slides the danger of Muharram was mitigated through the
context of the reading, whereas most of the postcards and films ignore the danger, opening up
a space for a less conscribed, almost uninhibited, experience of the spectacle.

14
The location of the event had not changed: the processions always started in the Muslim neighbourhoods
inside the city and would move to a tank or other large water source. See Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action
and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), pp.27, 28; and Jim Masselos, ‘Change and Custom in the Format of the Bombay
Mohurrum during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies,
Vol.5, no.2 (1982), p.50.
15
By contrast, images of Muharram today often show the lamentation in all its bloody detail. What caused the
transition from early twentieth-century images to these images is unfortunately beyond the scope of this article.
16
Sabine T. Kriebel, ‘Theories of Photography. A Short History’, in James Elkins (ed.), Photography Theory
(New York: Routledge, 2007), p.27. ‘Trace’ and ‘imprint’ are used by Rosalind Krauss to indicate how
‘photographs are first and foremost bound to the world itself rather than to cultural systems’ (ibid). It is
important here to add Christopher Pinney’s observation that besides the argument that the ‘photograph was a
record of what was placed in the camera’, there is the equally important question of whether ‘what was placed in
front of the camera was the appropriate matter to place there’. See Christopher Pinney, The Coming of
Photography in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), p.4, italics in original. This question requires an
analysis of how this particular ‘trace’ came to be in the photograph and in what ways it was influenced by
cultural discourses. Analogue photography should probably be understood ‘as both performative and
documentary, nature and culture’ and these aspects need to be studied in relation to each other. See Kriebel,
‘Theories of Photography’, p.38.
17
Pinney, The Coming of Photography, p.4.
18
Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1977), pp.14, 15.
19
Mary Pratt describes mastery over the landscape, by looking down upon it, as one of the ‘standard imperial
tropes’ in nineteenth-century explorer writing. See Mary L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and
Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), p.209. For an Indian example, see Pinney’s comment on Samuel
Bourne’s photography as ‘intent on achieving high-altitude points from which he could look down on a
picturesquely ordered India’ (The Coming of Photography, pp.27, 28).
 630 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

The Media
Magic lantern lectures were presented using a projector and glass slides.20 Technological
developments made magic lantern projectors more widespread in the 1870s and they
continued to be popular well into the twentieth century. The lectures could be of an
entertaining or more educational nature,21 and lectures on India were usually found in the
latter category. During these performances, a lecturer would present a series of slides with the
help of a reading. These could be bought or rented together. However because magic lantern
lectures were soon easily surpassed by film in importance and in any case were considered
only a ‘popular’ form of entertainment, no official institution was designated to systematically
archive the slides. Consequently, while paper readings discussing India can be readily located,
it is much more difficult to find the corresponding bulky slides, mostly leaving us with only
the title of the image and the text.22 The readings were originally written by individuals who
had visited India, but in many cases parts were copied from other readings.23 They were
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published by lantern manufacturers for general sale. Many of the readings are undated, but
indications given in the text date the publishing of most of the readings analysed here to the
1870s.
In 1894, the Post Office in Britain allowed for the first time the use of privately printed
postcards there, while the first moving images were shown to the public around 1895/1896.
Both of these media would achieve great popularity prior to World War I. At the height of the
postcard craze in 1908, more than 800 million postcards were mailed in Britain alone, and this
does not include those bought to be put in albums.24 Publishers and photographers in India
quickly realised the potential of Indian postcards for tourists and for the British living in India.
The former could send the cards home during their trip or create a collection as a memento of
their travels, while the latter could add postcards to the letters they wrote home as an
illustration of their stories.
A number of firms, both Indian and non-Indian, dominated the postcard industry in the
subcontinent, such as Moorli Dhur & Sons in Ambala, a major cantonment station; the
Phototype Company and the Ravi Varma Press in Bombay; H.A. Mirza and Sons in Delhi;
Gobindram and Oodeyram in Jaipur; and the Greek cigarette manufacturers Gianaclis and
Macropolo in Calcutta. Although smaller firms may have printed images in their own
facilities, these larger firms, while based in India and using images of Indians, often had their
postcards printed in Germany or Luxembourg because these countries had the best facilities
for lithographic reproduction.25
Because postcards were ‘cheap, disposable, mass produced and aimed at mass-markets’,26
much of the information about their production was not stored. As well, many of the printing

20
The American term ‘stereopticon’ refers to a type of magic lantern, a projector with two lenses, which allowed
the presenter to dissolve one slide into another.
21
For more information on magic lantern shows see R. Crangle, M. Heard and I. van Dooren (eds), Realms of
Light (London: Magic Lantern Society, 2005); L.M. Vogl-Bienek, ‘From Life: The Use of the Magic Lantern in
Nineteenth Century Social Work’, in A. Gestrich, S. King and L. Raphael (eds), Being Poor in Modern Europe:
Historical Perspectives 1800-1940 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), pp.467–84.
22
So far I have found sixteen readings on India, only two of which were published with images, and for another
two I discovered the images online.
23
In one instance, I found exactly the same reading under three different titles.
24
Saloni Mathur, India by Design. Colonial History and Cultural Display (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2007), p.114.
25
Ibid., p.115. On the printing of postcards in India, see Sandria Freitag, ‘The Realm of the Visual: Agency and
Modern Civil Society’, in Contributions to Sociology, Vol.36, nos.1–2 (2002), p.381, fn16.
26
Steven Patterson, ‘Postcards from the Raj’, in Patterns of Prejudice, Vol.40, no.2 (2006), p.149.
 Picturing Muharram 631

factories in Germany were destroyed during the First and Second World Wars, and with them,
a great number of data.27 Today, most postcards are found in museum collections or are
available for sale online, and knowledge has to be aggregated through the careful study of a
large number of postcards.28
The importance of the postcard lies precisely in its mass production. Their extraordinary
spread around the globe helped ‘create standard views of the world’29 at a time when
imperialism was at its height. As Shashwati Talukdar argues, citing Saloni Mathur, the
popularity of postcards between 1896 and 1915 coincided with ‘the heyday of European
imperialism’ because

the picture postcard is ‘both a cosmopolitan form and a constant reminder of the
imperial conditions that establish a basis for modern cosmopolitanism’. Considering
how the postcard culture was produced by the material conditions of empire, it is no
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surprise that postcards, especially the colonial postcard, were particularly well suited
to encode the project of empire.30

Postcards and film did not merely encode the project of empire. As I will show for Muharram,
they created their own visual language, and in doing so emphasised aspects that differed from
textual discourses.
Film played a similar role to postcards. In the early years of film, travel films were among
the most popular genres globally.31 The French film company Pathe became the most famous
and important creator of travel films worldwide. Charles Urban was the most influential
producer of travel films in Britain, initially as manager of the Warwick Trading Company and
from 1903 with his own Charles Urban Company. Unfortunately, many of these films have
been lost, as the silver and celluloid used to manufacture them were often recycled once a film
had outlived its commercial value, although descriptions and reviews of the films can still be
found in the catalogues and trade journals of the time. Initially, every film company published
a catalogue with information on its films,32 and from around 1906, trade journals increasingly
took up the role of listing and discussing a wide range of films.33 Early non-fiction film

27
Although it can be extremely difficult to date unposted postcards, if they were printed anywhere in Germany or
Luxembourg it indicates they were published before the beginning of World War I. For more details on the
technical history of postcards see H. Woody, ‘International Postcards’, in C.M. Geary and V.L. Webb (eds),
Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998),
pp.13–45.
28
The postcards referred to in this article are a representative sample of Muharram postcards.
29
C.M. Geary and V.L. Webb (eds), Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards (Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), p.11.
30
Shashwati Talukdar, ‘Picturing Mountains as Hills’ (2010), Tasveerghar [www.tashveergarindia.net, accessed
4 Oct. 2011], p.1.
31
Tom Gunning, ‘The Whole World Within Reach’, in Jeff Ruoff (ed.), Virtual Voyages, Cinema and Travel
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp.25–41.
32
As part of my research into the representation of South Asia in early visual mass media, I have been compiling
an inventory of all non-fiction film titles dealing with British India from 1895 to 1915 in European and American
catalogues and trade journals. So far this has resulted in about 300 titles, of which I have only been able to watch
a small number.
33
Ian Christie, ‘Comparing Catalogues’, in F. Kessler and N. Verhoeff (eds), Networks of Entertainment. Early
Film Distribution 1895–1915 (New Barnet, Herts: John Libbey Publishing, 2007), pp.209–17.
 632 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

usually consisted of fragments no more than five minutes long, and exhibitors could create
their own programme from the various short films available to them.34
There are a number of characteristics shared by these media: firstly, they all reached a wide
and diverse public; and secondly, their origins lay in still or moving photography rather than in
painting.35 However they were different in two key aspects: firstly (although of less relevance
for this article), in their reception—public for film and magic lantern, individual for the
postcard; and secondly, the magic lantern readings contextualised slides within a larger story
of India, invariably justifying British rule. Postcards and films usually portrayed only one
aspect of India, which had to carry and, even more importantly, sell, the whole story.36
The most important characteristic all these modes of representation have in common is that
they delighted in bringing the world ‘home’ and showing it as different. The magic lantern
shows and films discussed here were almost always created by ‘non-Indians’ for ‘non-
Indians’. This does not mean that Indians were never involved in the process of creating these
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images or never saw them, but the ultimate decisions about the images used were made by
non-Indians and the audience kept in mind was a non-Indian one. However for postcards it is
more complicated because both Indian and non-Indian firms operated in the Indian market;
nevertheless even for Indian firms the non-Indian market was important, and the images they
produced usually conformed with demand.37
From an ‘image’ point of view, Muharram provided a condensed and engaging visual
experience, both different and spectacular at the same time.38 The annual procession was there
to be captured on a moving or still camera with a minimum of direction needed from the
filmmaker or photographer; it was a ‘ready-to-kinematograph (or ready-to-photograph)
spectacle’.39 The centrality of the spectacle in early cinema has been investigated by Tom

34
I. Christie and J. Sedgwick, ‘Fumbling Towards Some New Form of Art?: The Changing Composition of Film
Programmes in Britain 1908–1914’, in A. Ligensa and K. Kreimeier (eds), Film 1900: Technology, Perception,
Culture (New Barnet, Herts: John Libbey Publishing, 2009), pp.151–64.
35
Taking photographs for magic lantern slides was no different from taking photographs to be printed on paper
except for the size of the glass plate the images were printed on.
36
Intertitles did create more space for a narrative, but were not used in the film I discuss below. Before intertitles
were used films were often presented with a spoken commentary. What type of commentary was given depended
entirely on the presenter, but as it was usually not written down, it is nearly impossible to retrieve. Review
comments in film trade journals range from utterly racist to the questioning of British rule in India, indicating
the variety of opinions that existed.
37
The reproduction of topics attractive to British tastes is most noticeable with Moorli Dhur & Sons in Ambala.
Their postcards seemed to be entirely created for British soldiers passing through and only dealt with images
related to the British experience in India. Other companies like the Ravi Varma Press or the Phototype Company
had a more mixed collection including views for tourists as well as Hindu religious images.
38
A discussion of this spectacular aspect of photography in India is relatively rare in discussions on early
photography in India. Pinney argues that portraiture was more popular because it ‘produced better results’ than
‘the large collectivities of the sort by which—so one kind of historiography would claim—India in the
nineteenth century was still largely constituted’. See Pinney, The Coming of Photography, p.109. However in
film, the spectacle created by these large collectivities was as interesting as the portrayal of individuals.
Postcards and films of Muharram reflect an interest in the spectacle that India provided so well. One example of
attention to the more spectacular aspect of photography is Kama Maclean’s discussion on the photogenic
attractions of the Kumbh Mela from colonial times until the present. See Kama Maclean, Pilgrimage and
Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad from 1765–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.40–2.
39
A. Gaudreault and P. Marion, ‘The Mysterious Affair of Styles in the Age of Kine-Attractography’, in Early
Popular Visual Culture, Vol.8, no.1 (2010), p.26.
 Picturing Muharram 633

Gunning. In an attempt to account for the absence of a structure centred around narrative in
early films, he suggests that it was a ‘cinema of attractions’.40 Rather than seeing this as a
‘primitive’ form of entertainment, such films should be understood as being structured on a
different basis, that is it is a cinema based on its ‘ability to show something’,41 thereby
‘inciting visual curiosity’.42
Consequently non-fiction travel films should be understood first of all as views: the camera
mirrored the act of observing, so the spectator could experience the sensation of observation in
the cinema.43 Although what was framed by the camera was, unsurprisingly, influenced by
‘pre-existing social attitudes’,44 these travel films were also characterised by a certain
‘atemporality’, that is they attempted to ‘essentialise’ a place, ‘to fix it in time and space’.45
Therefore, a clearly-articulated social or political argument was often absent.46 In the case of
the films discussed here, they were of course created within a colonial paradigm. Importantly,
however, these films did not necessarily attempt to create a structure which would either
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justify or question this colonial paradigm.

Muharram
Muharram, the mourning of the deaths of Hussain and Hassan, has special importance for the
Shi’a community, but several historians indicate that in the nineteenth century it was often
celebrated by both Shi’a and Sunni Muslims.47 Its underlying philosophy of distance from
authority, combined with ‘a popular devotional culture’, was attractive to many other religious
groups as well.48 For the British, it became the festival representing Islam in India, and they
became almost obsessed with it, believing it to be an occasion for dangerous outbursts of
communal violence.
The ceremony of Muharram has several different aspects, ranging from the reading of the
story of the martyrdom of Hussain to the lamentation, or matam, in the days before, but also
during, the procession; from re-enactments of embattled groups fighting evil forces to the
parading of tabuts through the streets. It is this last aspect that held most fascination for the
foreign spectators and observers, because although Muharram is officially a time of mourning,
the processions of elaborate tabuts attracted crowds of spectators, often creating the
atmosphere of a festival.49
The tabuts, also known as ta’ziyeh, represented the tomb of Hussain and consisted of ‘a
“slight” framework of bamboo, in the shape of a mausoleum, covered and ornamented with
“coloured paper and tinsel”. Tabuts varied in size and appearance, according to the resources,

40
Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, in Thomas
Elsaesser (ed.), Early Cinema, Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), pp.56–62. This
concept has been extremely fruitful and is now widely used in the study of early cinema. See Wanda Strauven
(ed.), Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006).
41
Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions’, p.57 (italics in original).
42
Ibid., p.58.
43
Tom Gunning, ‘Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the “View” Aesthetic’, in D. Hertogs and N.
de Klerk (eds), Uncharted Territory. Essays on Early Nonfiction Film (Amsterdam: Stichting Nederlands
Filmmuseum, 1997), p.15.
44
Ibid., p.19.
45
Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film (Durham/
London: Duke University Press, 2013), pp.34–5.
46
Gunning, ‘Before Documentary’, p.19.
47
See among others Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’, pp.49, 50.
48
Freitag, Collective Action and Community, p.251.
49
Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’, p.50.
 634 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

taste and ability of their builders’.50 Each mohallah (neighbourhood) in a town made its own
tabut, and for the first nine days of Muharram they stood on the road where they had been
built. On the last night they were paraded through the town, and on the next day were sunk in
the river, sea or a water tank outside the town centre to conclude the festival.
Riots did sometimes occur, but as in Kipling’s story, colonial investigators rarely sought the
underlying political, economic or social factors that influenced communal tensions.51 Gyanendra
Pandey shows convincingly that the riots of 1809 in Benares were described and analysed by the
British in purely religious terms. They were seen as originating in a clash between Muharram and
Holi processions throughout the nineteenth and even into the early twentieth century, even
though this was not the case, and political factors played an important role as well.52
British discourses tended to emphasise Muharram riots between Hindu and Muslim
communities,53 but often entirely different groups were involved. Different mohallahs might
clash, competing over leadership of the community in the town; Sunni and Shi’a Muslims
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might disagree over the manner in which Muharram was to be observed;54 and Jim Masselos
notes that there were attacks on the tabuts built by East India Company sepoys in the early
nineteenth century.55 Although the latter instance was an expression of dislike of the British,
the violence which occurred during the riots was rarely directed at the British police posted to
oversee Muharram; the British were mostly afraid not so much of a direct attack, but of the
possibility of the riots getting out of hand and overwhelming a town.56
The British obsession with rioting made them lose sight of the fact that most Muharram
processions were peaceful. Masselos argues that considering the number of people involved in
Muharram in Bombay, it is surprising riots did not occur more frequently, or on a larger scale,
during the nineteenth century.57 In 1913, Muharram processions were suspended in Bombay
following riots in 1904, 1908, and 1911, a result of escalating sensitivities around the tabuts in
combination with protests against police interference.58 The colonial experience of Muharram as
a dangerous festival, therefore, did not change significantly during the period under discussion.

Muharram Visualised
Descriptions of Muharram in magic lantern readings give an explanation of the festival, but
only one of the three readings discussed here refers to the anxiety it created. The Optical
Lantern Reading of Calcutta, alongside the image ‘Muharram Procession at Bow Bazaar’,
states that ‘dangerous conflicts occur between Mohammedans and Hindus, sometimes

50
Ibid., p.53.
51
Freitag, Collective Action and Community, discusses the context of popular culture for understanding these
riots, which did not appear much in British descriptions.
52
Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1990). See also Freitag, Collective Action and Community.
53
Pandey, The Construction of Communalism, p.36.
54
Justin Jones, Shi’a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012), pp.100–12.
55
Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’, p.50.
56
Prasant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay
1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), pp.115-8.
57
Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’, p.55.
58
In 1912, the tabuts were left in their localities and sprinkled with sea water, in lieu of processions to the sea.
See Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’, p.59. For a discussion of the problems relating to Bombay’s Muharram see
also Sandria. B. Freitag, ‘The Roots of Muslim Separatism in South Asia: Personal Practice and Public
Structures in Kanpur and Bombay’, in E. Burke III and I. M. Lapidus (eds), Islam, Politics and Social
Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) pp.115-45; and Kidambi, The Making of an Indian
Metropolis, Chapter 5, pp.138–49, for a detailed account of the events in the early 1900s.
 Picturing Muharram 635

attended by loss of life’.59 The ‘continuous beating of the drum, day and night’ is noted, with
the inference that it is a tiresome festival for British residents, a common refrain. The textual
emphasis in lantern readings on the hazards of Muharram therefore constrained other readings
of the image, such as its bustling crowdedness. The emphasis on danger is apparent in the next
slide, which (mistakenly) claims to show the coffin of Mohammed in the procession, while the
accompanying text advises that ‘great precautions [are] taken by the authorities to prevent
encounters between Hindus and Mohammedans, as religious frenzy is greatly prevalent and
the most bitter antagonism engendered by both sides’.60
The two other readings use a single slide of a tabut to represent Muharram, possibly like the
image in Figure 1. These tabuts are praised in The Prince of Wales’ Visit to India (1875–76), a
presentation which introduced the people and places who would be the beneficiaries of the
prince’s rule. Here the tabuts are described as ‘gorgeously decorated, and at night beautifully
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FIGURE 1. Tabut. Magic lantern slide, 1870s.

Source: Author’s personal collection.

59
Optical Lantern Readings: Calcutta, Rosiebelle and the Dwarf, A Humourous Cure for Intemperance
(London: York and Son, n.d.), slide 27. The reading can be roughly dated to the 1870s by slide 33 (of a Kali
temple in Calcutta) which states that ‘as recent as 1866’ a human body had been found inside it. This reading
and others were found in the British Film Institute’s library. They can also be found on the website of the British
Magic Lantern Society, which restricts access to members only. An impressive and ongoing catalogue of lantern
readings and slides on all sorts of topics is the website Lucerna, hosted by Trier University [http://www.slides.
uni-trier.de/index.php, accessed 15 Aug. 2013].
60
Optical Lantern Readings, slide 28.
 636 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

illuminated’.61 The slide used in the Mysore and Southern India reading also shows a ‘very
elaborate taboot’ made of paper cut with a small chisel into a variety of patterns.62 Any visual
representation of the surrounding crowds in this reading goes unremarked. However, the Prince
of Wales reading describes ‘[t]he crowds of excited shaiks [who] rend the air day and night with
their shouts, and the sounds of drums, trumpets, cymbals and all sorts of discordant music’.63
The Mysore reading notes the ‘delight of the Europeans living in the vicinity’ when Muharram
ends, because ‘the noise of the tom-toms and rude music. . .is almost unbearable’.64
Muharram is thus presented as both fascinating and annoying, but hardly dangerous, in
these latter two readings. The image of the tabut underscores the care and craft that have gone
into making it. Thus on the one hand, it could be argued these readings pair a discourse of
excitement with a visual image of containment. On the other hand, and more importantly, the
texts do not talk of violence at all, unlike the Calcutta reading. Since both readings concerned
themselves with the Prince of Wales’ visit it was imperative to avoid any suggestion of
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violence or chaos.65 In the Calcutta reading, noting the precautions taken by the authorities in
Calcutta, the seat of the British government, was possibly seen as containment enough.

FIGURE 2. ‘Calcutta Mohurram Festival on Maidan’. Postcard, Macropolo & Co., printed in
Germany.66
Source: Author’s personal collection.

61
The Prince of Wales’ Visit to India, Lantern Lecture (London: York and Son, n.d.), slide 46. This is the 1875–
76 visit.
62
Mysore and Southern India (London: York and Son, n.d.), slide 50. It mentions the forthcoming visit of the
Prince of Wales in 1875; probable date around 1874.
63
The Prince of Wales, slide 46.
64
Mysore and Southern India, slide 50.
65
The Mysore reading states its duty is ‘to explain. . .the scenes about to be visited by the future Emperor of
India’, Introduction.
66
Although there is no date on any of these postcards, they were all printed in Germany, indicating they were
published before World War I.
 Picturing Muharram 637

This lantern slide description of the Calcutta Muharram is in stark contrast with a postcard
depicting Muharram in Calcutta published by Macropolo, and titled ‘Calcutta, Mohurram
Festival on Maidan’ (Figure 2). Without the title, it would have been extremely difficult to
connect this image to Muharram, because almost all the visual characteristics of Muharram
seem to be absent. The image is of a large group of people gathered around a body of water;
there are a number of horse-drawn carriages in the foreground, and an orderly row of white
tents in the background. The people could have gathered for almost any reason, but a careful
study of the photograph reveals two tabuts standing at the water’s edge, to the left of a leafless
tree. The photograph is taken from an extremely long distance, completely separating the
viewer from the scene. Because of this distance, the people in the image do not appear to
move, making it very static. These characteristics relate the image to the discussion of the
paintings mentioned above: in an open space, the scarcity and almost invisibility of the visual
attributes of Muharram effectively remove all danger from it and the viewer’s fascination is
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‘properly’ distanced. Coupled with the distance and the view from above, the reference to the
Maidan adds a layer of British control over the event, as it was the spatial symbol of British
rule in Calcutta, and as such of British rule in India as a whole.67
By comparison Figure 3, ‘Mohurrum at Gwallior’ (one of the princely states), is very
different. The picture is taken from a roof and shows at least two tabuts in a street full of people.
Others line the roofs of adjacent houses to watch. Rather than showing an undifferentiated
crowd, this image is so close to the procession and the onlookers that individuals are discernible.
The tabut can be seen in such detail that it no longer is just any tabut, but one which might be

FIGURE 3. ‘123. Mohurrum at Gwallior’. Postcard, S. Mahadeo, Belgaum, printed in Saxony.

Source: Author’s personal collection.

67
Sarmistha De and Bidisha Chakraborty, ‘Maidan: The Open Space in History’, in Social Scientist, Vol.38,
nos.1–2 (2010), p.9.
 638 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

recognisable as a specific tabut. Nevertheless, despite the photographer’s proximity to the event,
the height of his viewpoint separates the viewer from the crowds milling below, creating a sense
of security and control. It was published by an Indian, S. Mahadeo, rather than a Westerner,
which may account for the openness to the festival portrayed in the postcard.
Two postcards of the Bombay Muharram are worth comparing. The first, published by the
Phototype Company and posted in 1905, is remarkable for the absence of any visual cues of
Muharram.68 Taken in Pydhownie Street in Bombay, the photograph is taken at closer range
than in the Calcutta postcard (Figure 2), and therefore appears more crowded. In the middle of
the road a more open space has been created for several policemen who patrol on horseback,
at least one of whom is British. British officers frequently accompanied processions, as John
Campbell Oman described in 1902: ‘behind [the procession] rode the embodiment, for the
nonce, of the British raj, a solitary Englishman, with a resolute but bored expression on his
face—the Assistant Superintendent of Police’.69 The British policeman as the embodiment of
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the Raj, and therefore of control, again connects Muharram with potential disorder: ‘rowdy’
Muharram in Bombay is here portrayed as orderly and under control.
The coloured photograph ‘Taboot Procession Bombay’ (Figure 4) shows the same street,
but gives a very different impression of Muharram and probably captures the atmosphere

FIGURE 4. ‘Taboot Procession Bombay’. Postcard, publisher unknown, no. 209413, printed in
Saxony.
Source: Author’s personal collection.

68
Image available at http://www.imagesofasia.com/html/india/moharram-mumbai.html, accessed 15 Aug. 2013.
The same image was listed for sale recently on eBay, with the vendor’s description stating it had been posted in
1911. Unfortunately the seller did not display the writing on the reverse of the card, which might have noted the
Muharram riots in 1911.
69
Quoted in David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1992), p.74. Before the assistant superintendent walks ‘the force of constables’, all Indian and all
on foot.
 Picturing Muharram 639

extremely well. Pydhownie Street is brought closer to the viewer, as the image is taken from a
slightly higher standpoint than the procession itself, but much lower than the roofs of the
houses opposite, suggesting that the photographer and therefore the viewer are not entirely
removed from the fray. The almost uncontrolled swaying movement of the tabuts can be
tangibly felt. The streets, houses and even the roofs of the houses are packed with people.
Significantly, the procession moves towards, rather than away from, the viewer. The postcard
shows Muharram, as the Times of India described it in 1884, as ‘a carnival. . .the like of which
for extent and eccentricity, is to be found in few other cities of the world’.70 It ignores the
entire troubled discourse around Muharram and presents it purely as a festival, with the
procession moving towards the viewer, virtually inviting him or her to join in. In this way it is
almost as if the postcard was made in defiance of the discourse of violence and of British
efforts in Bombay to tie the festival down.
Thus, while the first postcard from Calcutta (Figure 2) can be understood as continuing the
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tradition of painting that distanced Muharram, the last image from Bombay, a city almost
equally important to the British Empire, and the image from Gwalior, a princely state of less
immediate significance to the British, have completely moved away from this tradition and
instead focus entirely on the spectacle.
Films of Muharram moved in a similar direction, even though none of the film producers
were Indian. Here Muharram was treated as a spectacle of considerable interest. The Warwick
Trading Company of Britain was the first to film it as the ‘Morurrum Procession in India’,
advertising its product in 1902.71 The description states that ‘all natives, irrespective of caste’
(which could also be understood to mean religious groups), participate in the procession.
However ‘at the time of the festival’, they have all become regular fanatics’. (In colonial
writings, the term ‘fanatic’ was frequently used for those Indians considered to be entirely
beyond the pale, such as ascetics).72 Here, the term hints at the menace Muharram posed when
its participants’ behaviour spiralled out of control.
Kineto Ltd., also led by Charles Urban in Britain, shot a film of Muharram in Calcutta in
1912.73 The review in the British trade journal, Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly, describes
Muharram as ‘the most important festival of all connected with that faith’. The film shows a
‘number of huge torchlight processions. . .at night, with accompaniments in the shape of war
dances, mock fights, and so on. Some interesting close views of the crowds help to make the
scene more realistic’. In contrast to the strongly negative connotations of ‘fanatics’, ‘war
dances’ and ‘mock fights’ emphasise instead the performative aspect, which is accentuated by
the views of the onlookers.74 Although there was the potential danger that the dance and fight
performances could spiral out of control into real fights, this aspect is far less pronounced. The
‘war dances’ and ‘mock fights’ are mentioned as part of the spectacle, rather than as a danger.
Although Calcutta as the location could be a partial explanation of why the dances and fights
were emphasised and did not need to be contained, Urban’s descriptions were often devoid of

70
Quoted in Masselos, ‘Change and Custom’, p.54.
71
Bluebook of Warwick and Star Selected Film Subjects, April 1902, nr 6775.
72
Rianne Siebenga, ‘Colonial India’s “Fanatical Fakirs” and their Popular Representations’, in History and
Anthropology, Vol.23, no.4 (2012), pp.445–66.
73
Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly (11 April 1912), p.ix.
74
Re-enactments of recent events, such as wars and boxing matches, enjoyed great popularity in the early years
of film. The camera could be used to create a representation that not only brought the real event onto the screen,
but was also devoid of all danger. This description reminds me of these re-enactments. See A. Gaudreault, ‘The
Cinematograph: A Historiographical Machine’, in D.E. Klemm and W. Schweiker (eds), Meanings in Texts and
Actions: Questioning Paul Ricoeur (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), pp.90–7.
 640 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

the more anxious aspects of colonial discourse. As a businessman he clearly advertised to sell
the positive aspects of India.75
The French company Pathe produced two films on Muharram. Only the earlier one is
preserved and is discussed below. The second one, made in 1913, showed Muharram in
Hyderabad, and the description of it situates the film within the Orientalist context of ‘la
majeste des splendeurs de l’Inde’.76 The description tells of thousands of people standing
along the roads and on the roofs of houses to watch the procession of elephants, camels,
horses, dignitaries, flag bearers, and dancing warriors passing by. When the British trade
journal The Bioscope announced this film in December 1913, the description had been reduced
to one sentence. The festival was a ‘spectacle of extraordinary splendour, with richly
caparisoned elephants, camels and retainers’.77 Pathe displayed an interest in the human
aspect of Muharram, but The Bioscope seemed interested only in the exotic animals.
Pathe’s film description allows the spectators in the cinema to watch the spectators on the
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screen, creating an intricate web of human connections, whereas the Bioscope description
removes all humanity from its review. The Bioscope’s focus on the elephants, and to a lesser
extent the camels, meant a shift in emphasis from Muharram to one of the main symbols of
Empire.78 For the British, the elephant symbolised both control, when it was hunted or tamed,
and unknowability, when it ran amok. Consequently, riding an elephant demonstrated one way
it could be controlled and possessed.79 In the Bioscope text the retainers are alluded to because
they indicate control over the animals. Once this ‘imperial’ control is achieved, the spectacle,
as in the Pathe description, can take pride of place.80
Whereas in lantern readings the commentary on Muharram was ultimately embedded in a
narrative on the merits of British rule, in films Muharram was generally described in its own
terms. The Warwick Trading Company film most explicitly referred to possible danger in its
use of the term ‘fanatic’, while the Bioscope description of the Pathe film emphasised exotic
animals and their handlers. By contrast, Pathe itself described and showed the event as if it
was happening in front of the viewer’s eyes, not shying away from the large numbers of
people or even the ‘dancing warriors’. The ‘dancing warriors’ were also mentioned in the
description of the Calcutta Muharram, which equally saw little need for the imposition of
control on the crowds or the procession.
The only film of Muharram that appears to have been preserved was produced by Pathe in
1909.81 The film, ‘Delhi, grande ville de l’Inde’, portrays ‘a grand Mohammedan festival’.82
At this time Delhi was the former capital of Mughal India, and the film strives to emphasise
the city’s Islamic and Mughal character. In the film, beautifully coloured images show tabuts

75
In 1909 Urban advertised a film showing a cremation at Benares which stated: ‘there is nothing repulsive from
beginning to end’, thus countering general British opinion that cremation was repellant. See Kinematograph
Weekly (21 Jan. 1909), p.970.
76
‘The Majestic Splendours of India’ [http://filmographie.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com/index.php?
id¼15586, accessed 16 August 2013].
77
The Bioscope (4 Dec. 1913), p.xi.
78
Kurt Koenigsberger, The Novel and the Menagerie: Totality, Englishness, and Empire (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 2007).
79
Ibid., p.70.
80
It is possible that the different positions of the British and the French in India influenced these descriptions,
because the British were more concerned about a loss of control and power than the French, who had no
political influence in this part of India.
81
Stills of the film can be found at http://www.cinetecadelfriuli.org/progettoturconi/title.php?TITLE_
NUMBER¼758#clip, and at http://www.cinetecadelfriuli.org/progettoturconi/title.php?TITLE_NUMBER¼
202#clip, both accessed 14 Aug. 2013.
82
Moving Picture World (hereafter MPW), Vol.6, no.16 (16 April 1910), p.615.
 Picturing Muharram 641

and processions, so it is clear that this is Muharram, although it is nowhere actually stated.83
The version I have watched from Deutsche Kinemathek opens with a scene showing several
men who twirl a rope around themselves at high speed and, in one instance, a stick. It seems a
staged scene, with spectators standing behind the men, engaging with the camera. In contrast
to the elevated position of the camera in the postcards, the images in the film are all taken at
street level, in close-up, almost drawing the audience into the street with the other spectators.
However, the viewer’s alterity is expressed in the descriptions accompanying the film, in
which ‘the strange manners, customs and dress of the Old East’ are emphasised.84 Strangeness
and closeness are nevertheless very much part of the film’s attraction, rather than something to
be afraid of. Both Moving Picture World, an American trade journal, and The Bioscope
recommend the film highly.85
These images could be of the ‘Old East’, rather than of the modern (British) one, except
that the Raj is present in the form of two British policemen who walk among the people.86
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Each of them looks directly into the camera in different frames. What is interesting here is that
for me, these two representatives of the Raj are far more stereotypical than the Indians
surrounding them. A close examination of the stills reveals details such as their uniforms,
helmets and their identical moustaches, yet it is impossible for me to differentiate one from
the other. They have become entirely representative of a particular type: a British policeman
in India,87 and in this film, as in Oman’s comment, of the ongoing need to maintain law and
order. Although their brief moment of contact with the camera aims at emphasising their
control over the situation, they are in actuality merely representatives of British power; unless
a far larger contingent of policemen was perched at the ready outside the camera’s view, there
was no way these policemen could have controlled an outbreak of violence.88
So ultimately, the Pathe film is not interested in possible violence. Its closing images are of
Muslims performing their ablutions and praying at the Jama Masjid.89 The large spaces of the
courtyard and the walls of the mosque form an almost serene image that contrasts strongly
with the liveliness of the earlier images of the procession. This connection of Muharram with
an orderly, peaceful religious ceremony also places it in a very different context to the textual
representations focusing on violence, although the film provides only limited explanation of
the event, and of what is happening in each frame. However by drawing close to the
participants and emphasising the peaceful atmosphere, the film creates a space where Indians

83
See www.cinetecadelfriuli.org, stills 15600, 15601, 15606, 15607.
84
MPW, Vol.6, no.19 (7 May 1910), p.737 (emphasis mine). The Bioscope describes it as ‘the strange customs
which this curious people observes’ (23 Sept. 1909, p.33).
85
According to MPW, ‘it deserves a place on any manager’s list’. See MPW, Vol.6, no.19 (7 May 1910), p.737.
The Bioscope (23 Sept. 1909), p.33, states that ‘this is a film that should enjoy a very ready popularity’. This
type of comment going beyond the visual achievements of a film is quite rare.
86
See www.cinetecadelfriuli.org, stills 5774, 5779, 15604.
87
This resonates with Orwell’s comment that a white man in the East became ‘a sort of hollow, posing dummy,
the conventionalized figure of a sahib. . .[who] wears a mask and his face grows to fit it’. George Orwell,
‘Shooting an Elephant’, in George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books
Ltd., 1957), p.95.
88
Other stills do show one or two Indian policemen, but that does not change the argument significantly, since
their numbers are still not sufficient to control any large outburst of violence.
89
According to the Pathe description the film ends with shots of the Kutab Minar and the ‘Royal Palace’,
possibly the Red Fort, emphasising the important architectural aspects of Delhi. These shots are not preserved in
the stills on the website nor in the version which is available at the Deutsche Kinemathek. The Deutsche
Kinemathek version even lacks the images of the mosque [http://filmographie.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.
com/index.php?id¼3283, accessed 14 Aug. 2013].
 642 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

can simply be watched without an authorial control that wills them to become violent and then
to be rescued by the British.

Conclusion
Kipling told a story of Muharram that conformed to the stereotype of its imminent dangers.
This article has demonstrated that alongside this textual colonial story of Muharram another
visual story emerged. While the colonial imagination drew heavily on literary constructions
that could be summoned at author’s will, image makers were more dependent on the scene in
front of them. Through imagery, Muharram became predominantly fascinating as a spectacle,
and far less as a danger (although the threat of danger remained present in the press of the
crowds, and was anticipated and controlled in the form of a policeman here or there). As a
result, the spectacle of Muharram prevailed over its supposed danger.
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In magic lantern readings danger could be inferred. In them, the image of a Muharram
tabut was curiously devoid of people, whereas in postcards and film the procession of people
took centre stage. The more crowded, the more visually interesting the image becomes.
There was a reason for this change. It was not that Muharram no longer posed a threat for
the British, as the riots in Bombay in the early twentieth century testify. However, Muharram
on postcards and in film was imagined and visualised as a spectacle. Crucially, this was a
spectacle made to sell, whereas magic lanterns readings were intended to be more pedagogical
in nature. Images would only sell if it they were attractive, hence the emphasis on the
carnivalesque, and if they did not threaten or challenge the world view of the far-removed
spectator. To understand this image, it is necessary to bear in mind Muharram’s status as a site
of potential chaos. An image of Muharram out of control would have undermined the security
of the perception that the British were in charge. Unlike the magic lantern readings, which
could resolve such tensions through their accompanying narratives, neither postcards nor
travel films could do this by image alone. The films and postcards were driven by fascination
for the spectacle; they accepted a certain breakdown of the barrier between the coloniser and
the colonised. However, a complete surrender to the fascination of Muharram would have
broken down the barrier completely; indeed, the fascination was only made possible by the
safeguarding presence of British policemen.
The British Empire in India was encoded on postcards and in film through the economies
of attraction and spectacle. Visual representations of Muharram, however, went beyond mere
encoding: they modified the parameters of the discourse. No longer primarily an event which
showed off British supremacy, Muharram allowed for the almost uninhibited expression of
fascination with the ‘Indian’. This did not mean that ‘Indians’ became the equal of the British
spectators, but it did open up a space where they could be appreciated for what they
themselves did and where they came from.
Unfortunately, this openness to the spectacle of Muharram did not last, for it did not spill
over into fiction films. In a desperate cinematic attempt to convince the world of the need to
retain the British presence in India, Muharram would once again be configured as a festival of
danger and treachery. The fiction film The Drum, based on a 1937 boy’s adventure novel by
A.E.W. Mason and produced in 1939, portrays the British defending the North-West Frontier
Province against ‘treacherous’ Muslim rulers. The 1930s were years of strong nationalist
agitation in India, which were brought home to the British public, quite literally, by Gandhi’s
well-publicised participation in the Round Table Conference in London in 1931. In 1937
elections took place in India that, for the first time, allowed Indians to become ministers in the
governments of the Indian provinces. As a result, it seemed Britain was about to lose control
over the subcontinent. In The Drum, for the first time the British become the target of the
 Picturing Muharram 643

danger of Muharram; in the story the festival was to be the occasion for ‘the planned massacre
of British troops’.90 Predictably, in this imperialist story, the British were informed in time
and were able to prevent the massacre from happening.
In between Kipling’s Muharram story of 1888 and The Drum of 1939, the postcards and
non-fiction films of the early years of the twentieth century stand as a testimony to an ability
and willingness to look differently and to break down barriers, ignoring established colonial
discourses that were wary of Muharram.
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90
Prem Chowdhry, Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000), p.67.