Captain Ram Charan Singh Who Composed the Patriotic Song "Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja", Plays the Violin For Gandhiji at the Harijan Colony, 1945

type

Digital Records

dc contributor

Roy, Kulwant

dc description sponsorship

Kulwant Roy was born in the year 1914 in Bagli Kalan, Ludhiana, and educated in Lahore. Like other photographers at that time, Roy had no formal training in the medium. Instead, he learned on the job at Gopal Chitter Kuteer, the studio in Lahore where he worked. As a young man in the late 1930s, Roy began recording the activities of the Indian National Congress. He photographed Jawaharlal Nehru as a Seva Dal volunteer in Kanpur, and travelled with Mahatma Gandhi across India, accompanying him to the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) when he went to meet Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. In 1941, Roy joined the Royal Indian Air Force, training as an aerial Lensman in Kohat, near Quetta. He was assigned on an aerial mapping project to take photographs of the NWFP region with special cameras mounted on the aircraft. After defying a racist rule, he was summarily dismissed from his service, at which point he resumed photojournalistic work in Lahore. Roy worked as a freelancer and formed his own photographic agency, Associated Press Photos and shifted his agency to Mori Gate in Delhi. For the next three decades he pursued his vast and varied photographic career documenting the life of the newly independent country. Kulwant Roy passed away in 1984. For a long time his work was lost to obscurity but off late, he has been recognized as one of the most prolific visual chroniclers of 20th century Indian history.

dc format extent

19.5 x 12 cm

dc format medium

image

dc format mimetype

image/jpg

dc publisher

National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

dc subject

Photograph
Ram Charan Singh
Patriotic Song
Mahatma Gandhi
Harijan Colony

dc type

Photograph

parent collection in dspac

Photo Archives

parent dspace community na

National Gallery Of Modern Art, New Delhi

parent library name

National Gallery Of Modern Art, New Delhi

type of content

Photo Archives

dc description

Kulwant Roy’s photographs capture the solidarity and determination of the Congress leaders to secure the release of the three officers of the Indian National Army undergo a court-martial and the suspension of their trials in 1945. Its leaders, beginning with Mahatma Gandhi and including Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu, are seen in a series of morale-boosting meetings with the soldiers, as Capt. Ram Singh, composer of the rousing “Kadam kadam badhaye ja”, plays the violin. The flags of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League flew side by side in a wave of protests, the last time such unanimity would ever be seen. This set of 227 photographs by Kulwant Roy gifted to the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi range primarily from the 1930s to the 1960s. They are a visual archive of a momentous era in India's history, including many unpublished pictures. Some of the rare documentation includes Muslim League meetings, INA trials, the signing of the Indian constitution, as well as significant post-independence milestones such as the building of the Bhakra Nangal Dam.

dc coverage spatial

India

dc date accessioned

2020-10-13T13:33:07Z

dc date issued

1945

dc date available

2020-10-13T13:33:07Z