The Agency of Art to Counter Colonial Gaze
The Occident engaging with the Orient with a self-assigned mission to civilise is nowhere more discernible than in textual records concerning the Lahore Fort after Punjab’s annexation by the British in 1849. Referred to as the Lahore Darbar in its heyday, this seat of the Sikh court was already under partial British control after the appointment of their Resident in 1846. The early official and unofficial documents including weekly reports, letters to families in England and records listing people in different categories to decide their futures and monetary benefits abound with pejorative comments. The level of disdain reaches new heights when it comes to women in general and the thirty-three ranīs (queens), their female servants and 130 concubines residing in the fort in particular. Their invisibility and inaccessibility as a consequence of their veil made their personae mysterious and detestable. One example of the derogatory treatment meted out to them was the way the rates of their future stipends were fixed. Thus far enduring obscurity similar to their patrons, the visual and plastic arts including architecture commissioned by some of these ranīsoffer insights into their individual characters, achievements and contemporary artistic developments. Enveloped into the dismissive historiography built around them under the colonial gaze, these aesthetic accomplishments have long stood mute. This paper will give agency to the Sikh period visual and plastic arts to challenge these narratives and to cast away the colonial labels attached to their female patrons as shoddy characters and inferior intellects.