In their 1905-06 edition the Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal previewed ‘some remarkable films of Indian life’ made by the Walturdaw company (OPCJ, 1905-1906, 149). This enthusiastic review boasted that Walturdaw’s films were ‘taken by their own operators’ and that the films were the ‘best educational animated pictures yet before the public’. This series of films varied in length, and included a long feature about life on the River Ganges, as well as a film about ‘idol worship’, which depicted ‘in gruesome detail the horrible self-imposed tortures of the worshippers’ (OPCJ, 1905-1906, 149). The shorter films covered particular Indian subjects, such as A Procession of Lepers, Sacred Bathing, Caste Marks, Scenes at the Mahorrian Festival, The Devil Drivers, Sacred Elephants, and this film, A Native Street in India. For the journal, the value of these films lay in their comprehensiveness (‘they embrace almost every phase of Indian life’) and in their unprecedented subject matter (‘an impression of native observances that have never been put before the public in animated form’).

The early twentieth century was a period in which British and Indian life in the sub-continent was at its most segregated. Judith Brown has commented that, while Britons and Indians had mingled more freely in the earlier years of colonisation, by this period the British had become ‘a separate case in an already segregated society’ (Brown, 1994, 99). She writes of a ‘spatial segregation of British homes from areas where Indians lived, both in town and countryside’ (Brown, 1994, 98).

At the turn of the century India retained a primarily rural economy: 72% of the workforce were employed in agriculture (Brown, 1994, 112). The country remained poor. It was estimated in 1895 that the per capita income in India was £2.65 as opposed to £36.94 in Britain (Brown, 1994, 112). Indian society was nevertheless witnessing change. The country was becoming increasingly urban: 10% of the population lived in towns in 1901, as opposed to 8.7% in 1872 (Brown, 1994, 110). In addition, Brown claims that the expansion of transport communications was helping to integrate the country and forge a new sense of self-identity (Brown, 1994, 153).