Devsagar Singh / New Delhi
When Dalai Lama turned 90 last week, it became an international event putting on spotlight once again the likely successor of the spiritual leader and the future of Tibetans around the world.
While followers and admirers celebrated his birthday as a special event across the globe, for Tibetologist and journalist-photographer Vijay Kranti, it was an occasion to showcase his rare photographs of Dalai Lama in all his moods and associations spanning over half a century. “This is my way of celebrating the Dalai Lama’s birthday with whom I have been associated for fifty years and more”, Vijay Kranti said in a feeling of reverence at the exhibition at AIFACS art gallery in New Delhi on July 9.
Vijay has put up a unique photo-exhibition of some of his exclusive and historic portraits of Dalai Lama from his personal archive. He has taken these photos over five decades during his numerous one-to-one interview sittings and travels with the Dalai Lama in India and abroad. Interestingly, a parallel exhibition of another set of Vijay’s photos of the Nobel Peace prize winning monk statesman is also on show at Freiburg in Germany these days.
Titled “My 50-Years With Dalai Lama” the exhibition documents the spiritual leader’s interactions and activities along with portrayal of Tibetan life and culture in pictures that are rare in quality and content. Vijay’s work is considered as the largest and aesthetically rich one-man photographic study on this subject. His work also includes photo studies of life inside Chinese occupied Tibet where he has been able to make many daring travels. In the past his photo-exhibitions have been on show in many prestigious art galleries of India, Germany , Austria, Australia, Switzerland and Spain.The selection of photos makes it a special event as it aesthetically depicts some historic moments related to Dalai Lama. One photo which stands out for its importance is the one which shows late former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi standing as an ordinary member among the crowd while Dalai Lama is addressing a large gathering at the inaugural function of Tibet House in New Delhi on 23rd January 1979. “I was stunned as I saw Mrs. Gandhi quietly making her way through the crowd and stopped just next to me to have a good view of the Dalai Lama. Those were the days when she was out of power. But her decision to quietly join such an event was a special moment. The distance between her and my camera was too short for the focus. So I had to make efforts to push myself back to get the necessary focal space……”, says Vijay Kranti. Vijay has taken pains to preserve his film negatives and transparencies religiously since 1972 when he met Dalai Lama for the first time for a news magazine interview.
Another photo (Sep 1980) shows Dalai Lama enthusiastically playing on the traditional drums of a Beda family of Ladakh while Kushak Bakula Rinpoche, the top ranking Buddhist Guru of Ladakh and a large crowd of onlookers are watching him with awe. In Ladakh where the musician community of the Bedas has been suffering discrimination at the hands of the Buddhist clergy, Dalai Lama made it a point to visit a Beda family where he not only had food with the family and played on their drum, but also gave a stinging lecture to the Buddhist clergy about giving a respectable treatment to the Bedas.
Yet another photo shows Dalai Lama receiving Guard of Honour from a contingent of soldiers of the Indo Tibetan Border Police near Leh. Vijay Kranti’s photos of Dalai Lama riding a yak in the Zanskar valley of Ladakh deeply engaged in reading a news magazine at his Dharamshala home. Vijay has got international acclaim for several of his historic pictures.