By Manu Kant

In judging art, Marxism does not begin with beauty. It begins with class. Every image carries a standpoint. Every frame reflects a social position. The real question is simple: whose reality is being shown, and in whose interest?

Raghu Rai is widely celebrated as a great chronicler of India. His photographs move between poverty and power, faith and chaos, ritual and decay. They appear humane and sensitive. But Marxism does not stop at appearance. It asks: do these images expose the structure of exploitation, or do they only present its surface?

Raghu Rai does not arise from the proletariat. His formation and rise take place within the English-educated, urban middle-class cultural world. This is not a minor detail. It shapes his gaze, his themes, and his audience. His career, especially his association with institutions like Magnum Photos, firmly places him within a global bourgeois cultural framework.

These institutions are not neutral. They operate within capitalism and reflect its ideological needs. They select images that are powerful in form but limited in political content. They prefer an India that can be consumed — an India of spectacle, contradiction, and emotion — but not an India of organized class struggle.

This is exactly what dominates Raghu Rai’s work. The poor appear again and again. Workers, beggars, sadhus, crowds. But they do not appear as historical agents. They are shown as subjects of observation, not as forces of change.

Take his coverage of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The photographs are striking. They show death, grief, and devastation. But the political core is missing. The role of imperialist capital, the responsibility of multinational corporations, and the complicity of the Indian ruling class are not sharply brought out. The tragedy becomes universal, almost timeless — a human disaster without a clear enemy.

This is bourgeois humanism. It shows suffering but hides its roots. It produces sympathy but not struggle. The viewer feels sorrow, but is not pushed towards anger or action.

The same pattern is visible in his treatment of religion and spirituality. His lens repeatedly turns towards sadhus, rituals, and religious figures. Among them, figures like the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa are presented with reverence.

This is not accidental. Both represent a politics that separates suffering from material struggle. The Dalai Lama speaks of peace and compassion, but not of class power. His global image is supported by Western imperialist circles because it does not threaten capitalism. It directs attention away from structural change and towards inner transformation.

Mother Teresa follows a similar line. She did not fight to abolish poverty as a system. She worked within it. Her mission was to manage suffering, to give it moral meaning. Poverty appears as something permanent, something to be endured with dignity, not something to be overthrown.

By presenting such figures in a respectful and almost sacred manner, Raghu Rai reinforces this ideological framework. Suffering is elevated. It becomes moral, even beautiful. But it is not explained. The system that produces it remains outside the frame.

Thus, the class position of his art becomes clear. It does not come from the proletariat, nor does it serve its political needs. It speaks from within the urban middle-class worldview, addressing a similar audience. His photographs are consumed in galleries, books, and exhibitions — not in the spaces of workers’ organization or peasant struggle.

At the same time, his work is not crude propaganda for the ruling class. It does not openly celebrate capital or state power. Its role is more subtle. It shapes perception. It normalizes inequality by presenting it as part of a larger human condition. It turns exploitation into imagery, contradiction into composition.

In this way, it serves the ideological needs of the bourgeoisie.

So which class does Raghu Rai represent? Primarily, the English-educated urban middle class integrated into a broader bourgeois framework. The proletariat appears in his work, but only as an object. The ruling class remains largely invisible. The system itself is never directly confronted.

This brings us to the second question: can a true artist be a millionaire?

Under capitalism, art is tied to the market. To become a millionaire, an artist must operate within elite circuits — galleries, publishers, international recognition. This process rewards work that fits within certain ideological limits. It does not favour art that directly challenges the system.

A proletarian artist, rooted in struggle, aims not only to depict reality but to transform it. Such art resists commodification because it threatens the foundations of the market itself. If such an artist becomes wealthy, it reflects a contradiction. Either the work has been softened, or it has been absorbed in a way that removes its revolutionary edge.

Therefore, while skill and success can coexist with wealth, a truly revolutionary art cannot comfortably do so. It stands in opposition to the system that produces millionaires.

Raghu Rai’s success must be understood in this context. It is not merely the result of individual talent. It reflects alignment with the structures of bourgeois culture. His photographs are not false. But they are limited.

They show suffering.

But they do not show the path to end it.

And that is the decisive line between bourgeois art and proletarian art.