A new exhibition in Delhi is showcasing 200 rare photographs from the colonial era that reveal how the British Empire used photography as a tool to categorize, classify, and control the diverse peoples of the Indian subcontinent.

The collection, curated by the National Museum of India in collaboration with the British Library, includes ethnographic portraits, landscape surveys, and administrative photographs that were used to construct racial and caste-based classification systems.

“These photographs were not innocent documentation,” said curator Dr. Radhika Singh. “They were instruments of power — visual tools that fixed fluid identities into rigid colonial categories that continue to shape Indian society today.”

The exhibition features images from the People of India project, commissioned in the 1860s, which attempted to photograph and catalogue every ethnic group across the subcontinent.

Visitors have responded emotionally to the exhibition, with many drawing connections between colonial-era classification systems and contemporary debates about identity, caste, and representation in modern India.