A woman by the name of Jnanadanandini Devi became a silent rebel in the colorful yet constrictive milieu of 19th-century Bengal, where the remnants of colonialism blended with the earliest embers of contemporary Indian identity. Jnanadanandini is well-known for her groundbreaking work in social change, literature and fashion. She also used the camera, a lesser-known but no less potent instrument. In a time when women were frequently concealed behind the purdah and photography was primarily the purview of European professionals or elite men, she ventured to master the technique and utilise it to preserve an otherwise invisible aspect of society.
Jnanadanandini was married into the famous Tagor family at an early age after being born in Jessore, which is now in Bangladesh, around 1850. The first Indian to enter the Indian Civil Service was her husband, Satyaendranath Tagore. In colonial Bengal, however, she would be the one to test the limits of what it meant to be a woman. She is renowned for her innovative work as a writer and magazine editor, her reformist fervour and her transformation of the traditional Bengali sari into the more pragmatic Brahmika design. Among her many accomplishments, however, her subdued yet groundbreaking use of photography sticks out as a profoundly significant act of self-expression and resistance.
For Jnanadanandini Devi, photography was more than just a technical hobby; it was a way to preserve history and fight against patriarchal erasure. She received her training from Bourne & Shepherd, a renowned British photography studio that specialised in capturing colonial India’s architecture and populace. Using the newfound abilities, she focused on the Tagore household’s private, feminine world rather than the forgive vistas or colonial grandeur that most people choose. Jnanadanandini Devi took it upon herself to take pictures of women virtually never shot and were mainly excluded from public life at the time.
Even while it might not seem like much by today’s standards, this deed was revolutionary. In a subsequent letter, her daughter Indira Devi Chaudhurani wrote that her mother had taken images of relatives who had “ either never been photographed or who would never again get their pictures taken. “ Sarada Devi, the mother of Rabindranath Tagore, was one of her subjects; she would have otherwise only existed as a name in history books without a face. By taking these pictures, Jnanandanandini was capturing lives that were considered unworthy of being captured on camera by the societal mores of her era.
Jnanandanandini saw photography as a way to take back their identity. By being the one behind the camera, she turned the story around from colonial narratives that frequently portrayed Indian women as submissive, veiled individuals. She was writing, making decisions and conserving; she wasn’t just posing. She was able to provide visibility to individuals society had rendered invisible by using the camera she was holding as an instrument of agency. Under circumstances that actively prevented both seeing and being seen was a radical act.
Her involvement with photography is all the more impressive given that it was private. Her photographs were not published or displayed and she made no effort to get professional recognition. Instead, they were a part of women’s silent heritage, a family record or a personal archive. This adds to the poignancy of her art. She was demonstrating that these lives mattered, that they were worth documenting and that they were worth remembering when she decided to take pictures of her family, especially the women.
Her wider vision and reformist goal were closely reflected in her photographs. She utilised photography to quietly protest the erasure of women, such as creating the Brahmika sari to provide women greater mobility and engagement in public life and promoted female literacy through her writing and editorials. She made room for them to be recognised and appreciated as actual people with real-life experiences rather than as exotic artefacts or romanticised deities.
Her narrative also illustrates Jnanadanandini’s wider acceptance of modernity. During her pregnancy, she made the nearly unthinkable journey to England by herself with her kids. She organised salons where the brightest minds of the Bengal Renaissance came together, edited periodicals and lived apart from her in-laws. Her photographic style blends very well with this portrayal of a lady who isn’t afraid to push boundaries. Like the pen and the sari, she also used the camera to convey her views that Indian women should be able to see and be seen, act and be recognised and recall and be remembered.
Even if not many of her images are still in existence, her labour behind the camera will always be remembered thanks to her daughter’s testimony and her larger legacy. In many respects, she was one of the first Indian photographers to develop what is now known as a female gaze. And she accomplished this with quiet, revolutionary grace rather than with much hoopla. Jnanadanandini Devi safeguarded the hidden world and aimed a lens at it in a society that frequently evaluated women’s value based on how well they remained hidden. She conveyed a straightforward yet impactful message with her photos: we were here. We laughed, we lived and we fit in. We are still able to see them because of her.
History blinked as she pointed her lens behind the veil.
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- #contemporary Indian
