R. V. Pandit, the photographer

[Duarte Braga]

Dear all, I am writing on R. V. Pandit, especially interested in the relation between his poems and his lesser-known activity as photographer. I am reading S. M. Tadkodkar's booklet on him, where I gathered this info:

"He won prizes at all India level for his photographs. He had taken photographs of the Mahatma, for which he earned a gold medal in 1948. He printed a calendar featuring the Mahatma after selling gold-buttons gifted by his mother-in-law and some gold ornaments of his wife. This calendar also brought him name and fame. Government of free and sovereign India released his frames of the Mahatma on national postage stamps and currency notes. But Pandit neither said his Mahatma photographs nor made ttlem his asset for recognition as a Ga-:- Pandit in the movement for freedom of India"

(...)

His first photograph having a caption 'Sting Tail Fish' was published in the school magazine at Pune, which earned the first prize as well. His first photograph titled 'A Boy on a Hill' was published on the centre page of KODAK INDIAN MAGAZINE and continued such publication there on. He exhibited aesthetic sense through his photography and his photographs were published in the noted periodicals viz., THE TROPICAL PHOTOGRAPHY, THE LENS-LIGHT COLUMNS etc. But, he never dreamt that this liking would take him to greater heights! His name was included in 'Who's who in Indian photography? (p. 7-9)"

 

Does anyone have any indication of where I could find these photos? Any online archives containing these digitized magazines? Any help would be much appreciated

All the best,

Duarte

--

Duarte Drumond Braga

 

Investigador | Researcher

Centro de Estudos Comparatistas | Centre for Comparative Studies

Faculdade de Letras | School of Arts and Humanities

Universidade de Lisboa | University of Lisbon

 

[fredericknoronha]

Guess we know so little about aspects of our own past... this is an important aspect, Duarte. I've heard of RV Pandit's work in photography, and the photo-made-into-a-stamp which he created of Gandhi (or Gandhi/Nehru) was in the news some time back here. But so few links available online about this aspect of his work.

To complicate things, there is another RV Pandit (an East Indian Christian, born Thomas Ignatius Rodrigues in Vasai earlier Bassein) and has been a prominent publisher/film-maker in Bombay in more recent decades. Do let us know how the study goes, and share any links when possible. Many thanks! FN

PS: Does anyone feel there is a need for a study on Goan photographers in the Diaspora/Daizpora, in places ranging from Malaysia/Singapore to Kanpur, East Africa and the paparazzi in the UK even today, apart from other places we have perhaps forgotten?

[V M]

There is an immense legacy of Goans in early modern photography, from the earliest days of practice in India (via Narayan Daji Lad and many other pioneers), in the homeland itself (where the Goan "family archive" is one of the great 19th and early 20th century treasure troves), and then across the Indian Ocean tradeways especially in East Africa. It's a huge area for study + research, which has not been touched at all. This essay of mine is relevant: http://scroll.in/article/709359/how-colonial-goa-used-photography-to-create-images-of-a-democratic-india

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[Marianne de Nazareth]

RV Pandit (an East Indian Christian, born Thomas Ignatius Rodrigues in Vasai earlier Bassein lives in Bangalore

Marianne

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Editor Romantic Getaways https://www.bellaonline.com/

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[Duarte Braga]

Dear Frederick, do you have a link for the referes Ghandi stamp?

All the best 

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[Filipa Vicente]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59fqQFcIIY

Dear all, Dear Vivek,

Your article published with Scroll in 2015 is very interesting indeed and I quote it in the article I wrote on photography in Goa before and beyond Souza & Paul. Meanwhile, and before this is published - it will be published in 2024 in an open acess academic journal - I send you the link to the conference which took place last october at Yale, US, where I spoke on the subject of Goan photographers in East Africa and in Bombay. The link also includes two other presentations, one of them also on Goa, by Ângela Barreto Xavier.

I will send you the text as soon as it is published.

If any of you has any comment or information on the subject, or knows of any recent work on the subject I would be grateful of you could share it as I will only close the article in may.

"INDIAN OCEAN VISUALSCAPES BEFORE 1890: PHOTOGRAPHY IN GOA, GOAN PHOTOGRAPHERS OUTSIDE GOA", Filipa Lowndes Vicente
     

Filipa Lowndes Vicente

Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa

www.ics.ulisboa.pt

https://lisboa.academia.edu/FilipaLowndesVicente

 

Latest book:

Filipa Lowndes Vicente, Afonso Dias Ramos, (Eds.) (2023). Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975 (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5

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De: goa-rese...@googlegroups.com <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com> em nome de V M <vmi...@gmail.com>
Enviado: 14 de abril de 2024 08:50
Para: Goa-Research-Net
Assunto: Re: [GRN] Re: R. V. Pandit, the photographer

 

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[Frederick Noronha]

Dear Duarte,

Somehow struggling to find that... but what I came across is:

QUOTE Presented a commentary & snippets on Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti - linking R. V. Pandit, the famous Konkani poet, just demised, an ace photographer of Gandhiji, with the great man, on Goa Doordarshan, in Konkani, on 3rd October, 1990. UNQUOTE

This is from the Goa University Report from 1990-91:   https://www.unigoa.ac.in/uploads/content/Annual%20Reports/annual%20report%2090-91.pdf

Franjoao was also a dedicated and versatile photographer, who as staff of the Administrative Intelligence Room, Ministry of Commerce delved into photography and mastered still and cine photography and all dark room techniques. This expertise gained him international recognition and he was elected to the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and was also made fellow of Royal Society of Arts. 

On October 17, 1971, he inaugurated a photography exhibition at the hands of noted poet R V Pandit. The photographs depicted nature, stones and flesh. 

https://www.navhindtimes.in/2013/07/13/magazines/panorama/panorama-franjoao-bow-forgotten-master/

R. V. PANDIT: JIVEET AANEE WAAWAR

by

 

DR S M TADKODKAR [RV Pandit: Life and Work]

https://archive.org/details/dli.viswakonkani.1423

This book was scanned by the World Konkani Centre in Mangaluru, India. The World Konkani Centre is founded by Konkani Bhas Ani Sanskriti Prathistan to serve as a centre for the preservation and overall development of Konkani language, art and culture involving all the Konkani people the world over. Additional Book Details: Edition: 2006 Price: 85 No. of Pages: VIII+114 Language: KONKANI Script: DEVANAGARI Type of Book: MONOGRAPH / BIOGRAPHY

If RV Pandit photographed Gandhi, another Goan became famous for photographing Jinnah – Ignatius Sequeira.

https://www.navhindtimes.in/2022/04/24/magazines/panorama/goan-to-scinde-the-story-of-a-forgotten-migration/#google_vignette

A Review of Konkani Poetry After Goa's Liberation

Nandkumar Kamat https://www.scribd.com/doc/44611122/A-Review-of-Konkani-Poetry-After-Goa-s-Liberation

Symposium March 26, 2017, Panaji The regional office of Sahitya Akademi at Mumbai, in collaboration with Goa Konkani Academy and the Institute Menezes Braganza, organised a symposium on R.V. Pandit, distinguished Konkani litterateur, on the occasion of his birth centenary year, on March 26, 2017, at Panaji, Goa. Dr Madhav Borkar, renowned Konkani poet, inaugurated the symposium. At the outset, Sri Krishna Kimbahune, Regional Secretary, welcoming the audience and participants pointed out the coincidence that the birth centenaries of both Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and R.V. Pandit fall this year. Pandit was a prolific poet and an accomplished photographer who wrote in Konkani, Marathi and Portuguese, but had received recognition as poet was only because of his poetry in Konkni, he said. Dr Borkar said that Pandit was an artist by birth, and achieved fame as photographer first, and then as poet. The diction he employed in his poetry was close to spoken Konakani, and he had opted for free verse deliberately, he stated. Sri Ramesh Veluskar, noted Konkani poet and critic, delivered the keynote address, saying that the pictorial effect Pandit’s poetry left was remarkable. Some other characteristics of his poetry were deliberate use of free verse, neo-realistic style, and deep concern for the downtrodden, he pointed out. Dr Tanaji Halarnakar, Convener, Konakni Advisory Board, chaired the session. Sri Sanjay Haramalkar, Chairman, the Institute Menezes Braganza, proposed a vote of thanks. Dr Harishchandra Nagvenkar and Dr S.M. Tadkodkar presented thier papers in the first session, while Sri Nagesh Karmali chaired the session. Nagvenkar said that Pandit’s diction was very energetic and lively, and the social awareness that his poetry displayed was exemplary. The downtrodden were the centre of Pandit’s poetry, and the distinguishing characteristic of Pandit was that he wrote about the downtrodden when he himself was quite well off, he said. Dr Tadkodkar said that Pandit instinctively avoided carnal element in his poetry, and responded to human sorrow, and voiced sensibly the suffering of a common man. His poetry was of compassion and empathy, he said. Sri Bhushan Bhave and Sri Hanumant Kambli presented their papers in the second session, and Sri Gokuldas Prabhu chaired the session. Sri Bhave observed that Pandit’s poetry had an air of revolution and revolt, and Pandit wrote in workaday language of masses unlike B.B. Borkar whose diction was deeply influenced by Sanskrit. Moreover, his poetry was interdisciplinary and left the effect of paintings, he added further. Sri Kambli informed that Pandit wrote poetry since 1963, and 44 years before that he experimented with his camera, and he was basically a photographer. It was Mahatma Gandhi’s influence that restricted him to make photography his profession. The Through My Window programme with Sri Prakash Vazrikar who was invited to speak of R.V. Pandit, was part of the symposium. Vazrikar said that Pandit attempted to express his disturbed and yet compassionate self in Marathi, Konkani and even Portuguese, and experimented rigorously with genres such as poetry, children literature, translation, and successfully with art of photography. It was Sri Harshchandra Nagvenkar who first pointed out the significance of Pandit as poet. The significance of Pandit’s poetry lay in the fact that it voiced the suffering and agony of common people in Goa but succeeded in transcending such geographical or ethnic barriers and spoke of humanity as a whole.

https://sahitya-akademi.gov.in/e-newsletter/mar-apr_2017_Newsletter.pdf

Mrs. P.S. Tadkodkar:  Article on 'Pastoral Poetry of R.V. Pandit in Jaag monthly issue. Prior to 1993-94

However, some of the best writing today expresses the voice of the subaltern. The earliest to focus on exploitation particularly of the Gaudde and Kunbi communities was R.V. Pandit who brought modern techniques to the writing of poetry; he famously burst into print with five volumes of verse published at once. An individualist, an official photographer to Mahatma Gandhi and something of a maverick genius, he is one of the few Konkani poets to have his work translated into English. 

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Writing+on+Goa.-a0315920710

Rgds, FN

[John de Figueiredo]

Dear Filipa,

Would love to read your article and have the link to the conference. I am at Yale and would have attended it had I known about it. Would you mind sharing with me the name of the Department at Yale that organized the meeting? I will ask them to place me in their mailing list.

Thank you.

John M. de Figueiredo 

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 15, 2024, at 7:16 AM, Filipa Vicente <filipa....@ics.ulisboa.pt> wrote:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59fqQFcIIY

Dear all, Dear Vivek,

Your article published with Scroll in 2015 is very interesting indeed and I quote it in the article I wrote on photography in Goa before and beyond Souza & Paul. Meanwhile, and before this is published - it will be published in 2024 in an open acess academic journal - I send you the link to the conference which took place last october at Yale, US, where I spoke on the subject of Goan photographers in East Africa and in Bombay. The link also includes two other presentations, one of them also on Goa, by Ângela Barreto Xavier.

I will send you the text as soon as it is published.

If any of you has any comment or information on the subject, or knows of any recent work on the subject I would be grateful of you could share it as I will only close the article in may.

"INDIAN OCEAN VISUALSCAPES BEFORE 1890: PHOTOGRAPHY IN GOA, GOAN PHOTOGRAPHERS OUTSIDE GOA", Filipa Lowndes Vicente
     

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[Frederick Noronha]

Some mixup on my part. Sushila Sawant Mendes pointed out that the iconic Gandhi-Nehru photograph was clicked by Mr Lorenzo, the uncle of the person who currently runs Lorenzo Studio in Margao! My bad... I mixed it up with RV Pandit's photography. FN

 

[Joao Paulo Cota]

Dear all,

I thought I would mention to researchers and speakers alike using Youtube video links, that there is a better way than using the live links and then almost always experiencing a bit of drama when clicking on these links on a live presentation - many things can go wrong.

Instead, it is possible to download the video from Youtube direct into a person's computer, save it on a desired folder and then link it to the presentation. This way one would just play a normal MP4 video file which is stable, instead of live videos that may be affected by internet access speed, etc.

Steps:

1. Click on the desired link to the video
2. On the URL address, just truncate the word 'youtube' to just 'yout' leaving everything the same
3. One will then get a window to prompt to save the file as MP3  (audio) or MP4 (audio & video)
4. One then saves the MP4 version at 480 pixel resolution (free) or higher (paid service)
5. Save it on a computer folder
6. Link it to a Powerpoint or InDesign presentation 
7. Play it

This way, one makes the presentation good smoother.

Cheers,

Joao Paulo

---

From: goa-rese...@googlegroups.com <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Filipa Vicente <filipa....@ics.ulisboa.pt>
Sent: 15 April 2024 11:01
To: Goa-Research-Net <goa-rese...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [GRN] Re: R. V. Pandit, the photographer

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[Eugene Correia]

Wasn't there one RV Pandit who edit a magazine, which was popular mag, whose name I have forgotten? Dom Moraes wrote for that msg. 

Eugene

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[fredericknoronha]

RV Pandit, the Goan poet (translated by Thomas Gay) and photographer whom Duarte is studying is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._V._Pandit

Raghunath Vishnu Pandit (1916 or 1917 to 1990).

RV Pandit, Raj Vasant Pandit was born Thomas Ignatius Rodrigues in Vasai, and is an East Indian publisher, film producer etc

A tribute to him by the journalist Amrita Shah (whose byline you would know) is here:
https://twitter.com/amritareach/status/1459469817002430464?lang=en

Similar sounding names and initials, but no connections. FN

[fredericknoronha]

Another interesting profile on Raj Vasant Pandit (the East Indian publisher):
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/profile/story/19970131-rv-pandit-producer-of-maachis-being-talked-about-for-other-reasons-as-well-831788-1997-01-14

[William Robert Da Silva]

I came in contact with Raghunath Vishnu Pandit, photographer,
literateur and much more very early in my work in contact between Goa
and Kanara in the 1970s. I had many sessions with him on Konkani
literature, folklore and much more. Unfortunately, when I suggested
his name for Sahitya Academy Award in 1977 as member of the SA Konkani
committee, all members wanted Ravindra Kelekar and his Himalayant and
not his Mhoje Git Gauddeachem. Second, I proposed, with the president
of SA agreeing with me, that Konkani be recognised in at least three
scripts for thirty years before a unity of scripts, but they denied
the cause. So, I resigned and never came close to SA again. I am even
now away from Goan Konkani politics.
You want to remember RVPandit. Are you honest?
William Robert Da Silva

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[Marianne de Nazareth]

I think it was called Imprint.

Marianne

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[fredericknoronha]

Dear Dr William, Thanks for sharing that background with us, about the kind of events which take place in boardrooms and academies, which lesser mortals might not have a clue about.

Regardless of the language politics of that era (which continues now too, probably in different formats), may I point out that the research query came from a Portuguese scholar who has worked at Macau and Brazil, and hence the comment "You want to remember RV Pandit. Are you honest?" might be totally misplaced here.

As for myself, I'm curious to just know more about all who worked on Goa, regardless of what field, approach or politics, how these have been treated, etc. In the 1970s, I was still a schoolboy in short pants. As you know, in the 1980s, I was still searching to find my way around Goa (and, on a maybe not unconnected vein, recall the bike-ride we took to a Konkani sahitya programme in Pernem on your red Bajaj M-80, or maybe M-50.) 

RV Pandit was then available in print though, and he had been quite well translated by Thomas Gay (whose name I sharply recall, but didn't find out much else). These slender books were published by Bhagwati Prakashan, probably Pandit's own imprint, and quite widely available in Goa in those days. 

But I agree with your wider suggestion: Goa doesn't adequately recognise those who have worked so long in these fields, even within some of our living memories. FN

[Duarte Braga]

honest?

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[Eugene Correia]

Yes, you are right. First published from Hong Kong, and, much later, from Bombay. If I am correct. Dom Moraes edited it.

The mag featured good writers and, for me, it was very satisfying. I don't which mzg nowadays can be comparable to Imprint.

Eugene Correia 

 

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[Frederick Noronha]

Imprint has been identified as one of the magazines propped up by the CIA during Cold War times to stem the Soviet influence on Indian intellectuals...

See this piece in the Outlook too:

https://www.outlookindia.com/books/an-imprint-of-a-different-sort-news-228785

https://thewire.in/history/cia-sponsored-indian-magazines-engaged-indias-best-writers

And the secrecy added a second bonus, that the cultural propaganda would be more “subtle”– indeed, undetectable to some – when compared with the clunky Soviet version. That is, until it was definitively exposed in 1967. As my new book, Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers (not yet available in India) argues, whatever goodwill earned from the subtlety of those cultural efforts quickly washed away when they were tainted by the CIA connection. Since the patronage had grown so vast, and the magazines and other outlets so numerous, many of the world’s intellectuals had been touched by the controversy, whether they spoke out or not. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who had contributed to one of the magazines targeting Latin America, wrote privately to his editor that he felt like a “cuckold” and would never contribute to the magazine again. The Indian intellectuals who had collaborated around one of the Congress’s magazines targeting the subcontinent, Quest (another was called Imprint) expressed similar indignation at the clumsiness of the scheme. Jayaprakash Narayan had worked with the Indian version of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and wrote to his connected friends that “It was not enough to assess that the Congress had always functioned with independence . . . . The Agency was only doing what it must have considered useful for itself.” His colleague, K.K. Sinha, wrote to announce that he was quitting the organisation, adding, “Had I any idea . . . that there was a time bomb concealed in the Paris headquarters, I would not have touched the Congress.” The following short excerpt from Finks shows that the Americans and Europeans seeking to “help” India and other parts of the developing world to see the evils of Stalinism were indeed merely doing what they “considered useful” for the agency and themselves and worked often with little understanding of the cultural exchange expected by their international counterparts.

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[Kenneth David Jackson]

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