Tarun Bhartiya’s ‘Em No Nahi’ photobook shows deep political, emotional engagement with Khasi Hills

A landscape greets us, from grass to the clouds high above, covering the hilltops, trees spread across and rocks in the front, all in black and white. This vastness is interrupted by a goat standing in the centre of the page, looking straight at the camera. The third page shows a child standing in front of a tin hut. These three atmospheric photos appear before the title page, as if already setting the stage for the discussion that the natural world came much before humans set foot on the land. How then can a select set of people ruin the landscape and communities that have come to cohabit the space?

Tarun Bhartiya’s first photobook, Em No Nahi, published posthumously, captures the matriarch of Domiasiat, Kong Spillity Lyngdoh Langrin’s resistance against uranium mining by the Atomic Minerals Division of the Indian government. Bhartiya was a documentary filmmaker, photographer, poet in Hindi, and a politically engaged image-maker whose work was deeply rooted in the landscapes and movements of Northeast India.

Even though he began living in Shillong when he was nine years old, he has been called “Dkhar”, an outsider. It never stopped him from engaging with the politics of the region. The images in the book were captured during his trips between 2006 and 2023 and showcase his deep political and emotional engagement with the Khasi Hills.

In the afterword, his partner Angela Rangad writes that Bhartiya was interested in everyday life in Shillong: “Its streets, its union meetings, workers and street vendors, those in power as well as the powerless, its musicians and artists, protests and celebrations, culture and traditions, the markers of faith and modernity, the symbolic and the mundane. Cityscapes, village life, rain, sky, black coal, green hills, objects of significance and meaningless ones.”

Em No Nahi is not just a photobook. It is a political archive that challenges India’s imagination of development through the quiet defiance of one woman. The photos and texts produced in this book were first exhibited at the National Photography Festival, which opened on January 2, 2025, at the Navajivan Trust, Ahmedabad.

Two types of freedom

The first part of the book, “Death House”, begins with images of Kong Spillity’s funeral. These black and white photos capture the crowd, from their feet to their faces, gathered to mourn the loss of their beloved matriarch and the funeral procession on that rainy day. It is followed by a series of landscapes from 2006, when Bhartiya travelled to Domiasiat for the very first time in a rickety bus. These images show the vastness of a land not connected by road – the hills and the forests beyond the tourism brochures of Meghalaya.

The texts describe the absence of Kong Spillity on the day of his arrival, “She is not there that day. Out in the forest, gathering pepper and bay leaves for market day. She returns only a day later.”

For the urban reader, this comes as a matter of disbelief, to stay in the forest through the night but it also reminds one of the symbiotic relationship people have had with the land. She had granted exploratory rights to the Atomic Minerals Division in the 1980s, only to say Em, no in Khasi, in the 1990s, as she noticed changes in her cattle and witnessed stillbirths in the region. Despite being offered 45 crores for 30 years, she refused to let Uranium Corporation of India desecrate the land.

Many might assume that this is fair compensation along with relocation and rehabilitation, but Kong Spillity asked, “Could money buy this river? This land? This freedom?” A year later, Bhartiya spoke to a senior technocrat of UCIL who said, “We will pay them, even make houses for them, give some of them salaried employment. They will become ‘reachable’.”

In these two conversations, we get to see the iconic photo of Kong Spillity looking into the distance, and the everyday life of the people in the village, including weddings, elections and protests against uranium mining. Kong Spillity’s defiance is captured in a poem by Donboklang Ryntathiang which has the following lines: I will not dance to the tinkling music of your coins, It is a screech to my ears.”

A spirit of resistance

The belonging to one’s land and development are juxtaposed as two types of freedom. While Uranium mining didn’t proceed in Domiasiat, the neighbouring villages began giving access in exchange for development – good roads, electricity, water, schools – which led to conflict between villages. But Kong Spillity and her villagers were determined to preserve the land and people from the ill impacts of mining, prioritising their heritage and wellbeing over the government’s relentless force for power and energy.

Despite the state’s efforts, the uranium continues to stay underground. The matriarch of Domiasiant, in saying Em, forged a spirit of resistance within her people who came forward to resist the plans for a dam in the Umngot river. This clear river, 100 kilometres away from Domiasiat, is considered sacred by its people and supports their livelihood. In a song, SF Mylliemngap writes,

Ah! Wah Umngot
Known across our Khasi lands
Since the olden days
You feed us and give us life
The powers that be
Its you they intend to come
after and destroy
Why should you only remain a
memory
O! Wah Umngot!

This love for the river ignites the resistance within the people, carrying forward Kong Spillity’s defiant spirit years after her death.

In the end note, Bharitya writes, “People who have lived with land being privatised, expropriated labour being turned into a commodity and hierarchy being sacralised, find it difficult to understand Kong Spillity.”

Em No Nahi is an archive of resistance in the Khasi Hills. It is also an invitation for the urban readers to reflect on their cosmopolitan identity that is far removed from belonging to a land. It also questions development and power and its costs to local lives. The book is bilingual, written both in Khasi and English. It comes with a short pamphlet on everything that is there to know about uranium mining. The black and white photos introduce readers to the beautiful hills, connecting them to the much sought-after terrain. Even without a sense of belonging, the readers are bound to ask, " Is development worth destroying this land?

This book introduces the work of an artist before Angela Rangad gives us a glimpse into the kind of artist Tarun Bhartiya was. It is a sentimental ride that enrages and spreads the spirit of resistance, but it is also an ode to Bhartiya, who died in January 2025. This photobook, the one that Bhartiya was hesitant to put together but always wanted to, ends with a heartwarming photo of him holding his still camera to his eyes, smiling, sitting on a bench which has “Life Goes on” graffiti on it.

Bhartiya’s work lives on after his passing, still spreading his activism, still making people aware of the political discourse in the West Khasi Hills.

Em No Nahi: Photobook, Tarun Bhartiya, Yaarbal Books.