Photographing Civil Disobedience
Bombay 1930-1931
Published on 31. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
264 pages
978-93-94501-95-9 (ISBN)
Description
Drawn from a rare and historical album, this volume takes readers on a visual journey of the unfolding of the Civil Disobedience Movement in and around Bombay (today’s Mumbai).
Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay 1930–31 brings together an interdisciplinary conversation around a rare collection of documentary photographs compiled in a historical album held in the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi. The album features 245 black-and-white images that capture the extraordinary history of the Civil Disobedience Movement in Bombay (now Mumbai), when the city’s cosmopolitan streets came alive with anti-colonial protests, processions, and propaganda—from the leading role played by the desh sevikas (members of a nationalist women’s organization) to the violent crackdown of police lathis (bamboo or wooden sticks) on non-violent demonstrators.
Focusing on the sea of ordinary people participating in public events, the essays in the volume engage with this remarkable visual archive that captures on camera the streets of Bombay turning into sites of anti-colonial and nationalist assertion. This book will be of interest to scholars of gender and women’s studies, urban studies, screen and visual studies, consumer history, as well as the material history of colonial India.
Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay 1930–31 brings together an interdisciplinary conversation around a rare collection of documentary photographs compiled in a historical album held in the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi. The album features 245 black-and-white images that capture the extraordinary history of the Civil Disobedience Movement in Bombay (now Mumbai), when the city’s cosmopolitan streets came alive with anti-colonial protests, processions, and propaganda—from the leading role played by the desh sevikas (members of a nationalist women’s organization) to the violent crackdown of police lathis (bamboo or wooden sticks) on non-violent demonstrators.
Focusing on the sea of ordinary people participating in public events, the essays in the volume engage with this remarkable visual archive that captures on camera the streets of Bombay turning into sites of anti-colonial and nationalist assertion. This book will be of interest to scholars of gender and women’s studies, urban studies, screen and visual studies, consumer history, as well as the material history of colonial India.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ahmedabad
India
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 268 mm
Width: 208 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
953 gr
ISBN-13
978-93-94501-95-9 (9789394501959)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Avrati Bhatnagar is historian of modern India and the British Empire with a Ph.D. in History from Duke University. Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University. Preeti Chopra is Professor of Modern Architecture, Urban History and Visual Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Debashree Mukherjee is Associate Professor, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) and co-director of the Center for Comparative Media at Columbia University. Dinyar Patel is Associate Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) in Mumbai. Murali Ranganathan is an unaffiliated scholar who researches 19th-century South Asia, with a special focus on Mumbai and western India. Abigail McGowan is Professor of History at the University of Vermont, USA, where she teaches about South Asia with a particular focus on visual and material culture. Kama Maclean holds the Chair of History in the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and is Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Humanities and Languages at UNSW, Sydney.
Content
• Preface by Rahaab Allana
• Introduction: Words of Light in Disobedient Bombay by Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy
• The Stages of a Disobedient Bombay by Preeti Chopra
• Visualizing the Urban Crowd: Political Spectatorship in the Age of Cinema by Debashree Mukherjee
• From Profits and Patriotism to Gandhian Austerity: Transformations in Bombay’s Swadeshi Landscape by Dinyar Patel
• Salt of the City by Sumathi Ramaswamy
• The Suburban Congresswoman by Murali Ranganathan
• Boycotting Women: The Street Politics of Consumer Activism in Bombay, 1930–1931 by Abigail McGowan
• Patrolling the Streets of Disobedience in Bombay by Avrati Bhatnagar
• “Noisy” Photographs: Listening to Images from the Civil Disobedience Movement in Bombay by Kama Maclean
• Introduction: Words of Light in Disobedient Bombay by Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy
• The Stages of a Disobedient Bombay by Preeti Chopra
• Visualizing the Urban Crowd: Political Spectatorship in the Age of Cinema by Debashree Mukherjee
• From Profits and Patriotism to Gandhian Austerity: Transformations in Bombay’s Swadeshi Landscape by Dinyar Patel
• Salt of the City by Sumathi Ramaswamy
• The Suburban Congresswoman by Murali Ranganathan
• Boycotting Women: The Street Politics of Consumer Activism in Bombay, 1930–1931 by Abigail McGowan
• Patrolling the Streets of Disobedience in Bombay by Avrati Bhatnagar
• “Noisy” Photographs: Listening to Images from the Civil Disobedience Movement in Bombay by Kama Maclean