He has captured numerous moments of anguish and ecstasy in independent India’s history. This time, the loneliness of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the winning body language of Narendra Modi moved Raghu Rai to do a pictorial study in contrasts.
By Ramesh Menon
Raghu Rai may be 72, but he does not look it or live it. He is a bundle of boundless energy and as he talks, the passion of his work as a visual chronicler of history flows through. As he edits his photographs and relives the moments he has captured, at his tastefully done-up office, a stone’s throw away from the Qutub Minar, he listens to Indian classical music to inspire him. He loves music and wanted to be a musician. Photography just happened by the way. Thank God for that!
Raghu is among the best photographers in the world and has been published in international publications. Since 1965, he has clicked thousands of photographs that have become immortal in magazines and his books.
His email id: [email protected] says it all. “I love this country and its people, and daily hope that one day every Indian can live with dignity,” he says. Acclaimed for his portraits of Indian political leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he stopped clicking political events 25 years ago. But when the country was hit by scams and collapse of governance during UPA-II, he thought he couldn’t turn his face away. There was so much happening, as youngsters stormed the social networking sites with their anger and desire for better days. The youth took on every politician it could.
So, on January 17 this year, Raghu thought it was worthwhile to attend the Congress Work-ing Committee proceedings. Nothing seemed to have changed in the party, as sycophants chanted typical slogans in praise of Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul. When he looked at the photographs he took, he was amazed at how he had captured expressions of utter loneliness and isolation of the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. His face and body language said it all—how he felt alone, humiliated, isolated and ignored. Raghu found that Singh had the same expression throughout the proceedings.
Almost all the shots and frames—18 of them—had the same feelings of alienation and hurt. No one talked to him. “There was the same gloom on his face, as if he was living a nightmare. He hardly spoke or made any impact on the meeting. He did not seem to have been the prime minister of the world’s largest democracy for the last 10 years,” says Raghu.
The photographer sat back and thought of what he saw in Singh’s pictures. At the Congress meeting, he found that the party was in complete denial of the scams and corruption that had stained it. It did not even feel the pulse of anger that was sweeping India. He remembered how he had photographed the towering and aggressive personality of Indira Gandhi, who was defeated during the Emergency but rose again, as the opposition could not put its act together. The energy she infused into her party was missing in the 2014 meeting; the sycophancy in January 2014 was sickening.
Meanwhile, the BJP was on the warpath, with a new aggressiveness to ride to power again. Raghu thought it would be worthwhile to study the contrast between the two parties, and their leaders. That took him to the BJP convention, held two days after the Congress’ meet. The difference that Raghu witnessed was stark. The BJP was electrified into ensuring that they win the elections, and it was more than obvious. Narendra Modi, then the PM-candidate of the BJP, was firing the party with his extempore speeches, and bringing in drama and emotion at every step. Raghu aimed his camera at Modi and found him bubbling with energy and hope. Each photograph of the future prime minister showed how he was in complete control.
When he examined the photographs of both Singh and Modi, Raghu knew that it could be an excellent political study in contrasts that was punctuated with irony and pathos, failure and frustration, hopes and dreams. Raghu quickly penned down his experiences at both the meetings and how he saw the two leaders. Also, what he thought of the aspirations of a new young India impatient for change.
His latest book, The Tale of Two: An Outgoing and an Incoming Prime Minister, visually tells the story of a historic election. Every picture tells a tale, a characteristic that Raghu always had. In his book, he says: “Outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hopes history will judge him kindly.
When the supreme power brings a wave to take you up and grants you the opportunity to be the supreme commander of the nation as large and complex as India, it expects you to perform your duty. Political compulsions and religious manipulations cease to hold any meaning in the larger interest of a nation and our part of the duty must be performed by each one of us flawlessly. In this nobody gets another chance, just like Manmohan Singh would not get a third chance.” Looking at the pages of his book, he says: “The UPA won the second term because of Manmohan Singh. Ironically, they lost in 2014 because of him.”
Raghu says that his friends commented that he had become a Modi supporter. “I am not anyone’s supporter. Anyone who supports the idea of India has to be helped. When I saw how he spoke in parliament, he did not seem to be the same Modi who was criticized all the time. He now realizes he has to change, he has to deliver. India will not take any excuses from him, as they have given him a majority and he has no coalition partners to pull him down. Modi is acting with dignity and we need to give him a chance. The moment he won, he seemed like a new man and I hope that feeling is true. My loyalty is only to the truth, as it speaks to you at that moment. The rest is history. We must receive and perceive the truth without any bias. This is our dharma.”
When the Anna Hazare movement against corruption erupted, Raghu went to witness it. “I was amazed to see the determination of families, who had come there with small children in their arms to support the movement against corruption and increasing crime. I told myself it is this corruption that is destroying India. The movement was so huge that I realized it could not be ignored anymore.”
Raghu began photography in 1965. When he looks back, he feels that India’s legal system let down its people by not ensuring that there was speedy justice and dignity to the victims. “What does one say about a system where innocent little girls are gangraped and then hung to death in the middle of the village? Is this zero tolerance?” he asks. And then he adds: “There has been a lot of misgovernance and total lack of accountability. Unless we are all accountable, nothing will change.”