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Who are the people?–Gandhi had asked PC. Joshi in the middle of an exchange of letters discussing communist politics and party activity in the 1940s. In reply Joshi had stated at length the class structures and social contradictions of India, in a somewhat formal and academic manner

–perhaps expected of such letters. But it makes one wonder what Joshi would have said had this been a more intimate conver-sation: would he for a moment have felt like pulling out the People's Age and Peoples War and spreading out the pictures in them before Gandhi? Lesser leaders might have baulked, but I suspect PC. Joshi would have enjoyed the idea. For, the pictures published in the communist newspapers of that period constitute a profound archive of thinking about the people of India, especially with regard to who they are. The people are the main protagonist of a fairly large and wide repertoire of images, produced in …