Technology
Photography: Why Foolish Restrictions?
A photograph accompanying this article shows London airport, one of the largest, most elaborate and important in the world.
The original shows every detail of hangers, runways, administrative and public buildings, as well as construction in progress on new facilities to handle the jumbo jets, when they come.
The photography reveals, in fact, every minute detail of military importance to a potential enemy. Yet it was taken by a London commercial firm of photographers and published in a famous magazine of world-wide circulation. Any member of the public can buy as many original copies of it as they like for a few shillings.
Forbidden
Here in India we are told as soon as we take off in an I. A. C. plane that the use of cameras during flights is forbidden, though many of us would like to take snapshots of the temples and villages over which we pass at low altitudes.
On the ground, glaring notices warn that photography is strictly forbidden, though many of us would like to take pictures of our friends leaving or arriving or the spectacular take-off of Boenings and Caravelles.
No one forbids photography on international flights. On my way to London last year I took perfectly satisfactory photographs of the Gulf of Aquaba and of the Suez Canal from the V.C. 10 in which I was a passenger, and this was just two days before the start of the six day war - the air below us thick with jet fighters.
For some quite incomprehensible reason, officials in India are mortally afraid of photographs. Could it be, one wonders, that photographs are apt to reveal incontrovertible evidence of negligence and inefficiency. Every where photography is frowned upon and often quiet illegally-forbidden.
This goes to such absurd extremes that in a recent visit to Orissa, at a remote region on the southern finger of Chilka Lake, I found a notice announcing that photography was not forbidden! It would never have occurred to me or anyone else, that it was! There was nothing there to photograph anyway-nothing but a few barren hills and a flat, featureless stretch of the lake. Nothing, in fact, except the absurd and badly written notice itself!
On my first visit to Calcutta, a few years ago, I was greatly impressed by the smartness of the policemen there, clad in immaculate white overalls, with contrasting black belting and white plastic helmets of the most modern pattern. I wished to take a photograph of one of them and merely out of polinteness I first asked if he would mind my doing so.
"No!" he said bluntly.
"But why ever not"? I asked him
He though for a minute and then: "No rule permitting," he said.
Can freedom and progress, I wondered, ever flourish in a community where nothing can be done without legislation of some kind to permit it?
These idiotic restrictions can, and often do, have serious results and are another of the many reasons why India has such a bad name among international tourists, any why so many are frightened off.
For example, foreigners have been arrested for taking photographs of the Howrah Bridge, though picture postcards of the bridge can be bought anywhere in Calcutta. Many photographs, including captions giving every possible technical detail about the bridge, have been published in newspapers and elsewhere from the time it was built. Back in Europe or the United States, the word quickly spreads among intending visitors that its no good going to India where it is often actually dangerous to take photographs.
I was informed recently that even in the celebrated Hanging Gardens of Bombay there are notices up forbidding photography, on account, apparently, of some reservoir or other just below.
Professionals
Another absurdity concerns ordinance survey maps of India. At one time any membger of the public could buy large-scale maps of India, but since the Chinese invasion of the north-east this has been forbidden. Now the last ordinance survey of India was carried out in British days-1943 was the year. I believe and naturally the British still have the maps. Anyone can buy a complete set of those forbidden maps in London to do what he please with them.
For the professional press photographer working in India the prospect is even worse. A few months ago I watched Madras harbor lobourers unload a wheat ship, wasting a great deal of grain by the use of hooks which tore the sacks. An official told me that he had frequently tried to prevent the use of hooks, but the men threatened to strike. A photograph of this waste, appearing in the press, would do much to arouse public opinion on the side of the officials. But as the harbour is a restricted area I was not permitted to perform the public service of taking it-which is very much a part of my job.
A few month ago I was repeatedly threatened with arrest by a sub-inspector when I took photographs of a perfectly ordinary lorry crash on an open road.