The Indexical Trace: A Visual Interpretation of the History of Fingerprinting in Colonial India

The invention of dactylography in the nineteenth century was inextricably linked to the imperial encounter between the British and their colonial subjects in India. Represented as a scientific technology, fingerprinting was used to produce abstract images of Indian bodies that could be placed within an archival system. The semiotic properties of fingerprinting along with the adaptability of a fingerprint as a visual image were critical to the successful operation of the practice. This article situates the history of fingerprinting in colonial India within a larger system of visual technology used by the British in institutions such as prisons. Through a comparison of different nineteenth-century technologies adopted in India, including photography, anthropometry, and fingerprinting, I argue for the recognition of a visual culture of fingerprinting that was key to the practice’s proliferation as a science.