“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” — African proverb

As a young child studying the long history of colonialism in my country, India, many textbook chapters unfolded the realities of life under British occupation. What drew my attention most were the pictures of my own predecessors—people with skin in varying shades of brown, carrying a spectrum of stories: some gazing at the camera with discomfort, grim lines of poverty and starvation marking their faces with scars of struggle; some wielding honour on battlefields; and others adorned with tall turbans, dignified strings of pearls, and rare royal jewels that spoke of heritage and exclusive luxury.

But what I didn’t realise then was that these images were not mere documents of time—they were tools of power. Photography, introduced to India in the 19th century, arrived with a camera in one hand and an agenda in the other. Though framed as documentation, these photographs did not capture India neutrally; they framed it to fit the logic of empire.

Colonial photography contributed to what theorist Edward Said later termed Orientalism: a manufactured narrative in which the East was depicted as mystical, chaotic, and regressive—ripe for Western intervention. The British used photography to visually validate their role as "civilizers"—a term wrapped in moral pretension but rooted in domination.

From ethnographic photos that reinforced racist stereotypes to portraits depicting colonial officers as Western saviours, images were carefully curated to construct a visual narrative of India's supposed need for intervention. As photography historian Luke Gaskell explains, “Everything, even photos of buildings, were taken with an agenda… They were making India look like a place that was in need of intervention. It was not meant to be shown as a grand former empire, but as these crumbling ruins.” What wasn’t shown was just as deliberate as what was—erasing India's intellectual legacies, thriving cultures, and self-sustaining systems.

These images served as visual endorsements of the "civilizing mission," a façade built on Eurocentric ideals that painted colonization as benevolence. The British did not just occupy land—they occupied the narrative. They cast themselves as heroes in a story that was never theirs to begin with. The myth of the passive, chaotic East was cemented not only in policy, but in pixels and plates.

This is history written from the top down: a colonial macrocosm where power dictated memory. Tribes became "anthropological specimens." Saints and labourers were posed as spectacles. Indian royalty was lavishly photographed not to honour tradition, but to showcase assimilation—submission dressed in silk.

Photographs, often seen as objective truth, were in fact carefully staged performances. They reflected a system of control: an aesthetic colonization of culture and identity. Eurocentrism became the lens through which India's past was flattened, redefined, and misunderstood.

To reclaim our past is not merely to restore old narratives, but to recognize where they were interrupted, manipulated, and erased. A single photograph may be worth a thousand words, but in colonial India, those words were often not our own. Today, when we revisit these archives, it is not enough to observe—we must interrogate. Who told these stories? Who benefited from them? And who was silenced?

Colonialism not only looted our land and bodies, but our authorship—and sometimes, the theft came with a flash. The project of decolonising our history begins by turning the lens back on those who once held it.