𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘶𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴, 𝘉𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘢𝘺, 1930–1931: 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘒.𝘓. 𝘕𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘺 𝘈𝘭𝘣𝘶𝘮

A cropped Image from the exhibition Disobedient Subject: Bombay 1930–31 Images from the K.L.Nursey Album.

The newly inaugurated Mumbai Gallery at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya presents the exhibition Disobedient Subject: Bombay 1930–31, curated by Avrati Bhatnagar of Duke University, along with her colleague Sumathi Ramaswami. Featuring a selection of photographs from an antique photo album known to be Photographs of Old Congress Party: K.L. Nursey, carefully preserved in the Alkazi Collection of Photography in New Delhi. The album is a historical record of India’s biggest anti-colonial movements, known as the civil disobedience movement, led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930–31.

The exhibition is organized into five thematic sections: The City, Salt, Women, Portraits of Disobedience, and the Police. The centre of the relatively small gallery room is further divided into two separate sections, one highlighting Mahatma Gandhi, displaying a charkha alongside reproduced vintage posters and digitized videos of the period. And in the other room, photographs by Homai Vyarawalla, along with her iconic Rolleiflex, Leica 35 rangefinder, and Speed Graphic Camera. Vyarawalla, commonly known by her pseudonym Dalda 13. India’s first woman press photographer. She served as the official photographer for the British government, known for her work documenting the final days of the British Raj and the emergence of India as an independent nation. Like two sides of a coin, both these dedicated rooms symbolically juxtapose the Freedom fighter and the Photographer.

Although women’s presence in the photographs, arguably taken by a single unidentified photographer, may initially appear ornamental through the photographer’s lens, the curators reframe these images as evidence of women’s active political participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement. Their intervention shifts the images from a photographer’s gendered gaze to the camera eye as a historical witness. What photographer zoomed out the camera held? In doing so, the exhibition not only reinterprets the album itself but also intentionally disrupts a visual narrative of a national history.

By subdividing the exhibition into thematic sections, the curators distribute this initial focus toward a more nuanced narration of the Disobedience Movement. As Bhatnagar notes. “The Nursey Album is a visual testament to the transformation of colonial Bombay into a nationalist city.” The protest and gathering spanned nearly twenty-five historical landmarks in the city, the ordinary men and women who confronted police brutality, rejected foreign goods, and circulated “do-it-yourself” style instructions for DIY salt production.

Sarojini Naidu, famously known as the Nightingale of India, stands out as one of the very few identifiable women in the collection, representing countless women who shaped this historic period. A striking photograph captures her addressing a large, all-male crowd, encircled by men moments before her arrest.

A close reading of this photograph, along with images featuring Subhas Chandra Bose, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and Vallabhbhai Patel. Anchored either in the authority of oratory or in a softly composed stillness. In contrast, Sarojini Naidu’s image is partially silhouetted, framed from the side. The image renders her presence yet shadowed.

Equally striking is a photograph featuring Jawaharlal Nehru alongside his wife, Kamala Nehru, their daughter Indira Gandhi, and his sister Krishna Nehru. The original typewritten caption identifies them not by their own names but as Mrs. Jawaharlal Nehru, Miss Nehru, and Jawaharlal’s Sister.

Does it reflect the compiler’s carelessness, or does it reveal a broader gendered logic in which women’s identities were subsumed under male kinship? Reading retrospectively, it may also signal the patriarchal structures that shaped nationalist visual iconography.

Thus, the curatorial reading of the album does more than showcase the subjects of disobedience. Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswami’s chosen ways of seeing are now enhanced as a form of curatorial disobedience in the exhibition.

*Courtesy Alkazi Foundation for the Arts