Deen Dayal

Deen Dayal

Raja Lala Deen Dayal Musaver Jung Bahadur (* 1844 in Sardhama (Meerut); † 1905 in Bombay ) was an Indian photographer who, like several of his descendants, got the monopoly on photographs at the court of the princely state of Hyderabad . In 1887 he was the first Indian to be the “royal purveyor” to Queen Victoria . The pictures collected by the family over generations are today an important source of the history of the princely state.

Life path

Deen Dayal trained at the Thomason Civil Engineering College of Rurki (United Provinces), which was attended at the same time by Sayyed Husain Ali Bilgrami . First he worked for the Public Works Department of the Maharajas of Indore as a draftsman. He also opened a company as a photographer in Bombay in 1875 under the name Deen Dayal & Sons.

He received the state commission to compile an album of the monuments of Central India. The British Queen liked this successful work. To complete it, he had also visited Hyderabad in 1884 with a letter of recommendation from the Viceroy Lord Dufferin to the Nizam . Asaf Jah VI, who has just come into office . , who was educated by Dayal's fellow student Bilgrami, was impressed with the quality of his images. He was then appointed court photographer.

The next year he settled at Secunderabad . A separate studio for women was also set up there, which was very unusual for the time. The pictures there were taken by an English woman. The studios in Bombay and Indore continued to operate. Practically all photographs of the court, the nobility and the city of the time come from him. Numerous Indian princes used his pictures as a means of self-expression. So also Asaf Jah VI. to document his "generous" help during the famines from 1895 to 1902.

After the turn of the century, he accompanied Lord Curzon as the official photographer on his travels through India and covered the Durbar in Delhi in 1903. In 1904, his son Raja Dharam Chand, who ran the studio in Bombay and who quickly ran into trouble, died. His wife died in July 1905, he fell ill too and followed her a few months later while he was under treatment in Bombay.

The Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts , acquired the photographic plate collection and its preserved equipment a few years ago. The Indian Post issued a 5-Rs on November 11, 2006. Postage stamp with his likeness with an edition of 400,000 copies.

Descendants

After Deen's death, his son Gyanchand († 1916) continued the business, who received a lifelong monopoly at court. The third generation of the three sons Gyanchands, Trilukand, Hukumchand and Amichand continued the business. However, it wasn't until Amichand came of age (1932) that it was more successful again. Asaf Jah VII began to support the family again in 1937. In the 1950s, a studio was set up in the palace known as Nazari Bagh especially for the numerous adopted children of the ex-Nizam. Gulab Chanda Jain continued the operation with his wife.

literature

• Judith Mara Gutman: Through Indian Eyes. New York 1982, pp. 28, 108-109
• MA Nayeem: The splendor of Hyderabad. 2nd edition, Hyderabad 2002
• Clark Worswick (Ed.): Princely India. Photographs by Raja Deen Dayal 1884-1911. New York 1980

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The date of death is unclear, the year 1910 given in en: Lala Deen Dayal and fr: Lala Deen Dayal could not be confirmed by available sources.
2. ↑ On the type and (small) extent of this help cf. Mike Davis: Late Victorian holocausts. El Niño famines and the making of the third world. 2001, ISBN 1859847390
3. ↑ partly reprinted in: Gutman (1982)
4. ↑ Collection ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ John Zubrzycki: The Last Nizam. To Indian Prince in the Australian Outback. 2006, ISBN 1405037229 , p. 221

Web links

Commons : Lala Deen Dayal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Deen Dayal at Google Arts & Culture
• deendayal.com , engl. numerous of his photographs.
• Exhibition by the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, 1993