| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
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 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.
|