“India’s journey towards Swaraj was never shaped by one voice or one route. Reform and resistance, revolution and non-violence, political negotiation, intellectual debate, cultural assertion and ordinary acts of courage all contributed to it,” says Neville Tuli, author and archivist, and founder of the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies (TRIS).
India completes 79 years of independence today. SWARAJ | Revisualising India's Political History, an ongoing exhibition in Delhi, presented by TRIS and curated by Tuli, is currently on view at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, till August 16, 11am to 7pm.
However, the exhibition isn’t simply about revisiting the past, but about what we learn from it. “Swaraj has a meaning, but the methods we use to understand it are changing,” Tuli says. “To understand history and the state of politics, society, the educational framework, the mindset today, it is essential to the internal journey of every individual—but what is its connection with the collective journey of India?”
To create a wider understanding through art, photography, print, film memorabilia and archival material, Tuli has drawn from his collection assembled over three decades. “Political history is never contained in one kind of object or one archive. A painting may express an aspiration that a newspaper records as an event; a photograph may document a moment, while propaganda reveals how that same moment was being interpreted, manipulated or communicated,” he says.
The exhibition, he says, brings the various aspects of the nation's journey into conversation without forcing them into a single or a linear narrative. “Partition, the making of the Constitution, the integration of the princely states, wars, the Emergency, social movements and continuing questions of justice and political integrity all become part of understanding what Swaraj means,” adds Tuli. “It was not about assembling the greatest number of famous objects. The question was: what allows somebody, particularly a younger person, to understand how an idea evolved?
What’s on view
The exhibition begins with portraits and early European coastal views of India, from Surat and Kochi to Hooghly, before moving into the intellectual awakening of the Bengal Renaissance and the First War of Independence in 1857. A painted poster for the 2005 Aamir Khan-starrer Mangal Pandey: The Rising places a cinematic representation alongside historical accounts of the uprising.
“A photograph, an artwork, a newspaper, a poster, a film image or an object allows you to enter history in a completely different way. An image can reveal relationships, emotions, symbols and contradictions that several pages of text may still struggle to communicate,” notes Tuli.
The exhibition touches on various aspects of the freedom story—the role of the princely states, the rise of print culture, and political movements, with glimpses of colonial India as seen through the photographs of the Italian-British photographer Felice Beato.
The exhibition also traces the evolution of India's national flag from an early version displayed by Madam Bhikaji Cama in Stuttgart to iterations featuring the charkha before the adoption of the Ashoka Chakra. Alongside it are representations of Bharat Mata and Mother India, showing how symbols of the nation developed and changed over time.
"People often don’t realise that the Tiranga went through possibly eight different evolutions," Tuli says.
Gandhi, memory and the Republic
One of the exhibition's largest sections is devoted to Gandhi. The exhibition also brings Gandhi into the contemporary moment, with Debanjan Roy’s ‘India Shining I (Gandhi and the Laptop)’, a 2007 work depicting Gandhi looking at a laptop, and Gigi Scaria’s ‘Who Deviated First?’, a 2010 digital inkjet print on archival paper that reinterprets the iconic Gyarah Murti, depicting the Dandi March. But here, Gandhi walks ahead while his followers walk away from him in the opposite direction.
A series of works by Anil Sengupta traces his life, from his birth and journeys to England and South Africa to his political campaigns. Nearby, Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs document Gandhi's final days. Nehru's announcement of his assassination and death, the funeral procession and crowds gathering in grief become part of the exhibition's visual record of a moment that marked a profound rupture in the new Republic.
The narrative then moves into independent India, with a section devoted to Nehru and the early years of the Republic, followed by documentation of the country's most turbulent decades. Newspaper clippings on Indira Gandhi's arrest, the Emergency, and her assassination, the death of Jayaprakash Narayan and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi sit alongside paintings by former prime minister V.P. Singh from the final years of his life. The exhibition also shows one of the first facsimile copies of the Constitution, from the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies.
Political cartoons by Bireshwar in Shankar's Weekly on the Nehru government reflects a political culture in which criticism and dissent found space in popular media — a history that resonates with today's memes, cartoons and political commentary online. Photographs documenting violence after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Bombay riots, as well as student protests against the Mandal Commission in Delhi in 1989, bring some of the country's more difficult post-Independence histories into view.
The exhibition also includes cinema. Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Shyam Benegal's Junoon, both centred around the 1857 uprising, for instance, sit alongside I.S. Johar's political satire Nasbandi, which critiqued the mass sterilisation campaign during Indira Gandhi's tenure.
Beyond the textbook
“August 15, 1947 is an extraordinary moment, but Swaraj cannot end at midnight on one particular date. Political independence is an achievement; self-rule is an evolving responsibility,” says Tuli.
For him, the exhibition also challenges how history is taught. “The written word is simply not enough,” he says. “You need to bring the visual, the audio, and the context so that young minds can experience learning with a deeper engagement.” One such example is a collection of Swadeshi matchbox covers featuring images and names of freedom fighters from the 1920s.
“Sometimes the smallest object tells you how large an idea has become,” notes Tuli. “A matchbox is inexpensive and almost disposable. Yet when Swadeshi imagery appears on something so ordinary, it tells us that nationalism was no longer confined to political speeches or intellectual circles. It has entered the marketplace, the household and the daily habits of ordinary people. These objects also democratise the archive. History is not made only through masterpieces or documents carrying official seals.”
As India marks another Independence Day, ‘SWARAJ’ asks a question that extends beyond the celebrations of freedom. “After achieving political freedom, how do we continually deepen our understanding of what it means to be free?” says Tuli. “It has to be a continuing process of questioning, negotiating, and deepening of freedom. Swaraj is an unfinished present — and always will be.”
This article is written by Adithi Reena Ajith
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