Long before bomb blasts became a pattern in India, Prasant Panjiar, who was trying to get a break in photojournalism, got maybe the first horrid picture of caste violence that shocked the country. It was 1981. Prashant, who was to rise to become one of India’s leading news photographers as part of a fantastic team in India Today led by Raghu Rai and Bhawan Singh, was working on a self-financed book on the dacoits of Chambal Valley.In his book titled That Which is Unseen, Prashant narrated the story.“We were travelling through Mainpuri when alleged dacoits again massacred 10 Dalit people in the village of Sadhupur on the night of 30 December. The next morning we headed for the village…That night New Year’s Eve, I travelled with the dead bodies to the morgue of the district hospital for the post mortem. Early morning on New Year’s Day I was back in the village to witness the women quietly grieving over their loved ones and stayed until the mass funeral late in the evening.”Chaitanya Kalbag who reported the massacre, showed Prasanth’s photographs to Raghu Rai who was photo editor in India Today. “Raghu Rai took me into the dark room to hand print each picture himself”. India Today ran the story of the massacre as a photo essay with the heading ‘Slaughter Without End’. With that essay an outstanding photographer was born. It was without doubt a breakout story for Prashant. Through hills, valleys and roads, Prasanth traversed over the next four decades to capture the pangs of a nation coming to terms with its own contradictions. Many more Dalit people were butchered since then in the Badlands of UP and Bihar and most of them have brought the daily dose of dismal pictures to the front pages.The photograph that emerged out of the dark room in Raghu Rai’s hands was seeped in a deep sorrow and a lurking sense of inevitability that many outside the dark realms of life which the Dalits of north India inhabit were seeing for the first time. In the foreground were the bodies of the dead wrapped in blood-soaked cloth. There was no one there who could give them a clean piece of cloth as they despatched to the afterlife. From some of these shrouds the feet stuck out as if reaching out for light or another chance at life. A group of about 15 women sit around the bodies strewn on the ground, their heads covered and weighed down by sorrow and pain. A buffalo stands there along with a few children wondering what all the fuss was about. We can make out that the silence and sorrow in that picture was blood soaked, like the shrouds. To be a Dalit person in India, especially along the arc of poverty stretching from the fringes of Delhi all the way to Bengal and Odisha, is to be part of that picture.December, 1981. Ten Dalit people were butchered in a village in Mainpuri by dacoits in what has been a continuing tragic theatre in the Badlands of Uttar Pradesh. “Early morning on New Year’s Day I was back in the village to witness the women quietly grieving over their loved ones and stayed until the mass funeral late in the evening.” Panjiar said. This picture is seeped in a deep sorrow and a lurking sense of inevitability that many outside the dark realms of life which the Dalit people of north India inhabit were seeing for the first time. Photo: Prasanth Panjiar. Courtesy: Binoo K. John.As the nation grew step by wobbly step from 1947, it was clear that many social tectonic plates would collide and tragedy would ensue. Killings of Dalit people, mostly by upper caste brigands, and retaliatory killings, became an oft-repeated template as the country emerged into the 21st century. What Prashant saw in the early 1980s was repeated time and again. Out of all this churning, emerged gangsters and rioters and those who killed for money. The capital Delhi too was part of this emerging scenario. The first big riots in Delhi post Partition happened in 1984, when more than 3,000 Sikh people were killed in many parts of Delhi. Many years later in 2020 another riot took place in Delhi but confined to the northeastern suburbs of Delhi, instigated by some rabid speeches by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Among those killed was an intelligence officer. Qamar Sibtain was there when his body was pulled out of the slush of a north Delhi drain. The hands tied to a rope is all what we see. It is dramatic and violent. Such a picture could only emerge from filth.“That some images may have the shock factor for some viewers is completely their perspective. It’s not my intention. Perhaps pictures that have an emotional factor, pictures that touch our hearts are much more powerful and remembered,” Arko Datta who shot the iconic picture of a tearful and utterly fearful Ansari pleading in front of the camera during the Gujarat riots of 2002, told me. Arko should know because to him belongs another heart-wrenching picture that has come to symbolise despair and never-ending sorry and tragic fate that follows India’s poor: the picture of a lady lying on the beach, her hands turned towards heaven in prayer, as her husband’s body washes up, after the tsunami of 2004 in Cuddalore on the Tamil Nadu coast. In its sheer helplessness and deep sorrow, in that final appeal to the gods who left her alone to face the world, that picture will stand out for ever. So much power and despair and utter sadness reach out of that frame.Agency photographers work admirably during crises and catastrophes. This image of a woman lying on the beach, her hands turned towards heaven in prayer, as her husband’s body washes up, in Cuddalore on the Tamil Nadu coast is incredible. In its sheer helplessness and deep sorrow, in that final appeal to the gods who left her alone to face the world, that picture will stand out for ever. This is the World Press Photo of the Year 2004. Photo: Arko Datta/Reuters. Courtesy: Binoo K. John.The dead remains with us. That signifies the end of hope and the beginning of a dark age for the woman and maybe for others like those in Arko’s picture. But men do cry too though. Outside the mortuary of Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, two young men collapsed into each other’s arms in total sorrow, just a few drops of tears glistening on one man’s face, after being told of the death of their dear one in the Delhi riots of 2022. To be there at such moments of private sorrow is the photographer’s calling. The man next to them is totally unconcerned though he too might be nursing his sorrow outside the mortuary. The signboard is a give-away for sure but that simple spontaneous act of comforting each other is so numbing.Excerpted with permission from All in a Flash: News Photography in India (Niyogi Books), to be published in September. This excerpt is from the first chapter of the book titled ‘Death and the Dying’. John’s earlier books include, Entry from Backside Only, Hazaar Fundaas of Indian-English, Under a Cloud: Life in Cherrapunji, Wettest Place on Earth and more recently Top Game: Winning, Losing a New Understanding of Sport.