OBITUARY: Sunil Janah

Tragic irony can hardly have a superior instance. Sunil Janah was, for a single day, back in the news: he had died, well in his nineties, in distant California. Seventy years ago, photographs taken by him vivifying the starkness of the Bengal Famine had gripped the nation. While it is debatable whether the photographs stirred the conscience of the imperial rulers, these at least embarrassed them no end. For the present neo-liberalised generation, that famine itself is an obscure footnote to some insignificant past annals, and Sunil Janah is of course a totally unknown name. Janah had migrated about ten years ago to Berkeley, California, where he was assured a minimum means of livelihood.