Back in the frame

It’s not often that an artist is rehabilitated from the rubbish heap of history. Looking at the 95 prints that form a part of History in the Making at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, one could, of course, question whether Kulwant Roy was an “artist” in the mould of, say, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Margaret Bourke-White, or a photojournalist.

But there can be little doubt that Roy had, besides the sense of occasion so necessary in a press photographer, an eye for the quieter, introspective moments that bring personalities alive and animate history for generations to come. Much of Roy’s work, like the one of Gandhi, Patel and Nehru is already well known, although few people knew it as being by Roy.

Thankfully, now credit will go where it was due. Also, the 95 works on view are supposed to be only a selection of the thousands left in boxes unopened for a quarter of a century. Who knows what treasures will be unearthed?

Glimpses of history in the making (clockwise from above): Gandhi with Sardar Patel and Nehru at a special session of the All India Congress Committee, 1946; Gandhi alighting from a third class train compartment sometime in the ’40s; Nehru in a similar pose around the same time; this snap, of Nehru and Jackie Kennedy sharing a laugh during her 1962 visit to India, is well-known; the prime minister at a Parliamentarians’ cricket match in 1953; the photographer in Japan, all his cameras slung around his neck