Rafai Fakirs: camera, colonial science, and making of an amateur film in 20 th century India

This paper examines the film Rafai Fakirs, made by Edmund Henderson Hunt, the Chief Medical Officer of Nizam State Railway in Hyderabad, in South India, to study the role of camera, as a scientific instrument in the hands of a physician turned anthropologist. Rafai Fakirs was a four-part film made in 1928, documenting the ‘self-mutilation practices of Muslim sect in Hyderabad,’ which the British Film Institute categorises as amateur film. The film at the first impression seems anthropological in nature, however, a critical reading of the colonial archive and the film archive: the film, and Hunt’s personal papers, exposes the complex interplay between colonial scientific rationality and early film, beyond the domain of representation. Studying such films expands our understanding of early film practices. It presents a rare insight into the colonial anthropological encounter, its processes, the relative agencies of the actors involved.