Photographs from the Book "The Desire of India" by Surendra Kumar Datta - 1909

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Click on every photograph to view the larger version.

A Plague Camp

 A children's Feast

(Top) A Christian Family
(Bottom) Santal Biblewomen

A christian family and their offering

(Left) A Group of orphans
(Right) Orphan girl gathering wood

(Top) A mission hospital
(Bottom) Patients and their friends

(Top) A village school
(Bottom) Biblewomen at work

(Top) Ploughing
(Bottom) Winnowing

 Bathing at Sivaratri festival

(Left) The well of salvation, Benares
(Right) The burning ghat at Benares

Benares Ghat

(Top) Tope marking spot where Buddha first preached
(Bottom) Buddhist rock-cut temples

(Top) Church in Santalia
(Bottom) Church in Gond country

(Top) Preaching by the wayside
(Bottom) Group of Catechists

(Top) A north Indian village
(Bottom) A shanan village in Tinnevelly

(Top) Village Street
(Bottom) Village well

Industrial training school

Rice Culture

The Maharajah of Travancore

The rock at Trichinopoly

(Left) A convert and her son
(Right) A Christian Baptism

(Top) The Himalayas
(Bottom) View from the walls of Delhi

(Top) A roadside scene
(Bottom) A stretch of southern coast

(Top) The great Indian desert
(Bottom) A roadside scene in the south

(Top) Winnowing the corn
(Bottom) Grinding the corn

(Left) Famine Animal
(Right) Famine Children

(Left) Brahman
(Right) Jat (North India)

(Top) An ascetic
(Bottom) A hillside Idol

(Top) Worship of the snake god
(Bottom) Asetic before image of Ganesa

(Top) Railway Station
(Bottom) Mouth of the Ganges

(Top) On the way to church
(Bottom) A Christian home

 The tomb of Akbar the Great

(Left) Toda Men
(Right) Toda Women

Village Preaching

Every-Day Life in India, Illustrated from Original Photographs by Rev. A. D. Rowe, M. A. - 1881

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There is an India of the books and there is a real India, and so different are the two that the student of the one would scarcely recognize the other, if without a guide he should suddenly find himself in a Hindu village. Many of the popular books on India have been written by European travellers, who necessarily had to confine their observations to the cities and larger towns, where they saw but little of real, undisguised Hindu life. A European traveller in India is in the greatest danger of getting false impressions. A Hindu is never himself in the presence of a foreigner. He is shy, secretive, and an adept at doing and saying what he thinks will please you. Along the routes of travel, moreover, Hindu life has become somewhat Europeanized and has lost much of its native simplicity.

Read the full book online or download PDF