While other followers and admirers of the Dalai Lama are celebrating his 90th birthday as a special event across the globe, Vijay Kranti, a senior journalist, Tibetologist, photographer, and a long-term close associate of the Tibetan leader, has found his own way of marking this historic event. He has curated a unique photo exhibition featuring some of his exclusive, interesting, and historic portraits and camera studies of the Dalai Lama from his personal archive at the AIFACS art gallery in New Delhi. He has taken these photos over the course of five decades, during his numerous one-to-one interview sessions and travels with the Dalai Lama in India and other countries, serving as his personal photographer. Interestingly, a parallel exhibition of another set of Vijay’s photos of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk statesman is also on display at Freiburg in Germany these days.
The photo-exhibition titled “My 50-Years With Dalai Lama” was inaugurated today by Balbir Punj, who is a famous journalist, columnist, author and a former member of the Upper House of Indian Parliament. The simple but elegant inaugural function was attended by a large number of art lovers and admirers of the Dalai Lama and the photographer. The participants also included Wilson Chang, Counsellor at the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Centre; Jigme Jugney, the Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New Delhi; and Rev. Acharya Yeshi Phuntsok, former Deputy leader of the Tibetan Parliament.
A good number of Tibetans in the capital, who were conspicuous by their colourful Tibetan costumes, were also among the participants.
In his inaugural speech, Punj underlined close historic and cultural relations between India and Tibet. Besides underlining the importance of a free Tibet’s importance for the security and prosperity of India, he ridiculed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s obsession with usurping the institution of the Dalai Lama and his next incarnation. Jugney admired the whole-hearted commitment and contribution of Vijay Kranti as a journalist and photographer towards raising awareness among Indian people about the Tibetan issue.
Vijay Kranti stands out as an Indian journalist and photographer for his lifelong association with the Tibetan issue and its biggest symbol, the Dalai Lama. His 53-year-long photo documentation of Tibetan life, culture and activities is monumental as it is internationally considered the largest and aesthetically richest 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 for this exhibition makes it a special event as it aesthetically depicts some important and historic moments related to the Dalai Lama. One photo that stands out for its historic importance is the one that shows Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India, standing as an ordinary member among the crowd while the Dalai Lama addresses a large gathering at the inaugural function of Tibet House in New Delhi on January 23, 1979. “I was stunned as I saw 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 preserved his film negatives and transparencies quite methodically and religiously since 1972, when he met the Dalai Lama for the first time for a news magazine interview.
Another photo (September 1980) shows the Dalai Lama enthusiastically playing the traditional drums of a Beda family from Ladakh, while Kushak Bakula Rinpoche, the top-ranking Buddhist Guru of Ladakh, and a large crowd of onlookers watch 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 the Dalai Lama receiving a 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, and some of his silhouettes and light and shade camera studies of the Tibetan leader have won him acclaim at the international level. The exhibition will be on show at the AIFACS art gallery for a week and will conclude on July 10.
