It is possible to write a history of India by studying the feet of its citizens. A political party comes to power with the promise of establishing Ram Rajya. It wasn’t exactly Ram, though, but his padukas or wooden sandals that sat on the throne in Ayodhya, a spiritual symbolism that marks devotion and can be found condensed in a name such as Ram Charan (the feet of Ram). How does the Indian State treat the feet of its citizens?

The haunting image of a torn sandal of a migrant worker walking to his home town hundreds of kilometres away to escape the hurriedly declared lockdown. Broken Foot, an exhibition documenting their plight, would feature, among other striking visuals of feet and walking, Balaji Ponna’s artwork, Walking Under an Empty Sky, which showed a single sandal, broken, kept together by wires, and, on it, almost like a hologram, the Indian map. There are Neeraj Priyadarshi’s photos of that time, recording the Indian State through the feet of these people walking in “a state of emergency”. In his photo of a man walking to Muzaffarpur, the latter’s slippers are tucked into his shirt collar, at the back of his head; his face is not shown, and his worn-out slippers have become his face in the photo. There are several others, including one of the journalist Salman Ravi offering his shoes to a labourer walking to his hometown, carrying a child in........

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