Photo 964/1(7)

Genre: Ethnographical Photography

Group of five men, posed in front of a partially completed landscape background painted onto the negative. 'Slavery - though not now a recognised insitution in India - has left traces over many parts of the country of its existence at no very distant period. This is specially the case in Katheawar and Kutch, where we have a people who are only known there and elsewhere by names which imply a condition of slavery, and who form amongst themselves a distinct portion of the varied population of those provinces. These are the Golas, or, as they are sometimes called, the Khuwas, the latter term merely representing those who had attained to some better position in the household of their masters than that ordinarily assigned to members of their community. Descendants of women who had been purchased as slaves, these people still regard themselves as 'hereditary slaves', and are perhaps so regarded by a large majority of their neighbours...Those whom we have illustrated were amongst the personal attendants who accompanied the Rajpoot chief of Eidur on his visit to Bombay last year...'

Subjects = ethnic groups; Johnson, 'The oriental races and tribes...' (vol 1, 1863); Khuwas; photomontage; slavery