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“Citizens, Arise, Awake”
“Citizens, Arise, Awake”
Disobedient Subjects is a collaborative project developed with New Delhi based The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, drawing on a collection of documentary photographs compiled in a historical album named Collections of Photographs of Old Congress Party— K.L. Nursey.
As part of this project, I have co-edited a scholarly volume Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay, 1930–31, published by the Alkazi Collection of Photography in association with Mapin Publishing (2025). The book features contributions from leading experts in cultural, visual, and material history of colonial Bombay and British India.
I have also curated an exhibition with Sumathi Ramaswamy, currently on display at the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai from October 2025 to March 2026. Another iteration of the exhibit will open on October 30, 2025 at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies, Durham NC, generously funded by The Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation Endowment Fund and The Arts and Sciences Council Committee on Faculty Research, Duke University.
The Exhibition
The Exhibition
Disobedient Subjects: Bombay 1930-31
Disobedient Subjects: Bombay 1930-31
Curated by Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy, Disobedient Subjects takes you on a visual journey around Bombay, today’s Mumbai, to witness the unfolding of the Civil Disobedience Movement against colonial rule in British India’s financial capital from about a century ago.
The full exhibit is on display at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai, India from October 11, 2025 to March 31, 2026.
If you are in Durham, NC and surrounding areas, you can catch an iteration of this exhibition at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies, Durham, NC from October 30, 2025 to January 19, 2026.
Learn more about the show here.
The Book
The Book
Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay, 1930–31 brings together an interdisciplinary conversation around a rare collection of documentary photographs compiled in a historical album titled Collections of Photographs of Old Congress Party—K.L. Nursey, held in the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi. The nine essays in the volume engage with this remarkable visual archive to analyze and make visible the varied historical processes that animated and informed disobedient action and nationalist politics in colonial Bombay in the 1930s. Edited by Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy, with contributions by Preeti Chopra, Kama MacLean, Abigail McGowan, Debashree Mukherjee, Dinyar Patel, and Murali Ranganathan.
Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay, 1930–31 brings together an interdisciplinary conversation around a rare collection of documentary photographs compiled in a historical album titled Collections of Photographs of Old Congress Party—K.L. Nursey, held in the Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi. The nine essays in the volume engage with this remarkable visual archive to analyze and make visible the varied historical processes that animated and informed disobedient action and nationalist politics in colonial Bombay in the 1930s. Edited by Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy, with contributions by Preeti Chopra, Kama MacLean, Abigail McGowan, Debashree Mukherjee, Dinyar Patel, and Murali Ranganathan.
Available for order here.
In the News
In the News
The Year of Living Disobediently, Mid-day, October 14, 2025
A different view of the past: How photo archives are bringing hidden stories to life, Mint, October 13, 2025.
City’s forgotten protestors of 1930 come alive in rare photo exhibition at CSMVS, Hindustan Times, October 11, 2025.
Saturday, 27 September 2025
11:00–11:50 AM Eastern Time
Room 1005, FedEx Global Education Center, UNC-Chapel Hill
Historians Avrati Bhatnagar and Sumathi Ramaswamy revisit colonial Bombay at the height of the Civil Disobedience Movement (1930-31), when the city’s streets teemed with nationalist action. Drawing on a rare photographic album from the Alkazi Collection of Photography in New Delhi, their forthcoming exhibit at Duke and in Mumbai shows how ordinary citizens challenged the might of the British empire as they marched, protested, made illicit salt, and gathered in public squares against the backdrop of the city’s colonial landmarks. This session explores the efficacy of civil disobedience and Gandhian nonviolence against imperial forces, while considering the ways photography both illuminates and obscures history.
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