Listening to Mukti Mission Photographs, 1899-1922

Pandita Ramabai Dongre was a well-known feminist reformer of 19th and 20th century colonial India. After converting to Christianity, Ramabai established a rescue home for destitute and widowed girls in 1899 called the Mukti Mission near Pune (Maharashtra). The Mukti Mission was the first Christian mission in colonial India that was meant for women and that was headed by an Indian woman, Ramabai, who was also a widow. What is important from a scholarly perspective is that the Mukti records contain a great many photographs. Even if photography was not completely new in 1900, it was still used to create a new forensic, mediated reality, that in Mukti's case served to produce it as a marketable entity raising funds and sponsorship. The question of funding was especially important for Mukti as neither Ramabai nor Mukti's Christianity followed any denominational base. Since the Mukti photos focus mostly on rescued women and children, the presentation will focus on how these photos can be read voices of disempowerment that are retrieved by weaving them into the Mukti discourse.