Countering Mainstream Narratives: A Conversation with Ishan Tankha

As India has undergone tectonic political and economic changes over the past few years, several voices have determinedly and with immense courage assumed the role of documentarians, creating archives of the contemporary moment. One such person is Delhi-based independent photojournalist Ishan Tankha. Tankha’s work has been featured in multiple publications and his images cover a range of topics, including portraiture, national politics and environmental issues. Over the past two years, he has been tirelessly involved in documenting the violence that his home, the city of Delhi, is being subjected to. Through his work, he has assumed the role of a witness, providing accounts of reality that are often being deliberately left out of mainstream narratives.

In the first of a two-part interview, Tankha speaks to Ketaki Varma about his work; the challenges of documenting violence, grief and protest; and the role of social media today.

Ketaki Varma (KV): The pandemic arrived in the aftermath of much political turmoil in Delhi: protests against the divisive National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship (Amendment) Act (2019); extreme targeted violence against students and religious minorities; police brutality and mass destruction. You spent much of this time on the ground, documenting protests, the violence and its chilling aftermath, capturing, in some sense, the active suffocation of secularism and democracy in India. Could you expand on this a bit?

Ishan Tankha (IT): I was not planning to go take pictures (of the violence against students in Jamia Millia Islamia in 2019), but it was happening in my own neighbourhood, so I did. When I began my career, I often went to Jantar Mantar to cover protests, but I do not remember them getting out of hand, barring some isolated incidents. From 2019, the kind of repression that one regularly sees on the ground is chilling. The state has started coming down violently on any kind of protest or opposition. I think the attack on Jamia was the beginning. That night, it felt like a war zone. In fact, on my way to Jamia I met a few photographers—they were standing by the road about a kilometre from the university—who told me they were not going any further because it was too dangerous. This was a college in New Delhi we were talking about. How did it become too dangerous? Reaching there, I realised that the ones in control were the state, the police. The university was surrounded by riot police; there were multiple rounds of tear gas fired. As we found out later, on many occasions it was fired directly at the students, resulting in the blinding of one and many others being injured. Students coming out of the campus late at night with their hands held up above their heads is a sight that should shock all of us. That night left an impression not just on me but also the city.

The Shaheen Bagh protest started as an expression of anger as well as solidarity. The protest which began as a simple occupation of a road and became a symbol of peaceful protest. Over time, it had a profound effect on the entire country—there were “Shaheen Baghs” popping up across India. While it was such a potent site, I found it surprising that many photographers—who one would otherwise find at big, dramatic news events—were missing or arrived late. I imagine it had something to do with their employers; if they are not interested in publishing (these stories) then why pursue it…

Interestingly, much of our visual understanding of that moment was built by freelancers, students, protesters and allies who were present there. That was a big difference (compared to the past), as far as photography was concerned. There were, of course, the wire agencies like Reuters and mainstream publications represented. But there were also a lot of young photographers—most of whom possibly did not identify themselves as “photographers,” yet whose images really affected how we saw the city and that time unfold. Many were students of Jamia or fellow protesters and there was a very conscious attempt to counter the mainstream narrative, over which they realised they had little control.

KV: For many of these people, social media becomes the primary platform to disseminate information, often in real-time. This social media phenomenon is characteristic of the camera-phone age, where every public incident is captured and circulated at the moment it happens, in a way that is useful but can also be misused…

IT: Yes, social media is both a tool to be used and something to be a little suspicious of. It has the ability to reach huge numbers but there are no inherent systems for checks-and-balances. Therefore, one partakes of social media with a pinch of salt. But such problems aside, it became the only means to counter mainstream narratives.

And I do not understand why we say that these people on the ground are not “photojournalists.” They might not see themselves as photojournalists, but what they are doing is photojournalism. In fact, they might be doing a better job of it than many mainstream publications. Everyone who was there to shoot what was happening in Jamia took images of the bus burning and people being beaten up and for many the story ended there. Shaheen Bagh was not a violent protest. It did not have the draw, therefore, of that “dramatic picture.” It was only when the numbers of protesters increased and there were famous people who wanted to come and participate that the interest increased. So, I think photojournalism might be failing its viewers, because it seeks the kind of image that will make it to the front page over all others. This is why we then need these other photographers who are doing the real work, as it were, capturing the moments between the madness, which in many ways is more important.

To read the second part of this interview, please click here.

All images by and courtesy of Ishan Tankha.