Stereoscope views, fruits and vegetables in Delhi

What I have here today is a stereoscope image of a Delhi fruit vendor from the early 20^th century. Stereoscopes were viewing devices that would generate a 3D image for the viewer with greater depth and vision. The idea was to experience places and people ‘as if you were there’ and stereoscopy was so popular that it became an early form of mass media that gripped Europe and the Americas. 

 

With their stereoscopic images and accompanying information, the company ‘Underwood and Underwood’ promised the creation of a new culture of travel – even better than actually physically visiting far off places. They produced images of buildings, trades and ethnographic material for eager audiences to view. In the case of colonised lands, the stereoscope had the potential to domesticate a foreign landscape, making it knowable and amenable for colonial control. Of course, as with all colonial interventions, information gathering was incomplete, fractured and transformed by Indians. Historians have written a lot on this.

 

What I am also interested in here is the social side of this story which involves the fruit and vegetable vendors in Delhi. As it says in the description, the vendor in the picture is operating from Chandni Chowk. It’s highly likely that his goods were bought at Sabzi Mandi (main vegetable market) where they were sold through auction sales by dalals (brokers). In some cases, fruits and vegetables were stored overnight in facilities provided by dalals themselves and this vendor may have availed of them. 

 

The Mandi was a hotbed of activity just as it is today but in the late 19^th century there was a lot of debate over the nature of the premises. It was shifted to a new site on the pretext that the original Mandi was insanitary and that dalals were corrupt middlemen and needed to be removed. However, this process was not without complications; opinions differed whether on the one hand, the dalals were mistreating the vegetable and fruit vendors or whether they were an ‘enterprising section’ of the population, involved in an intricate system of exchange. The records are replete with objections from within the government and between it and others like the Mandi traders.  

 

Ultimately, the government relented and the question of compensation came up for the aggrieved parties – the trade of Sabzi Mandi, the dalals and its vendors endured. 

 

More on related issues every Friday. See you next time.