This world belongs to us all

Photojournalist Raghu Rai

‘A heartbroken elegy'
An excerpt from the Introduction by Maneka Gandhi

There is a soul-logic in the animal world. Lions mourn. Elephants stand vigil over their dead. Crows remember human faces for years. Bonobos share food with strangers. Ants care for their injured. Science is only now catching up with the wisdom indigenous traditions had accessed millennia ago: animals feel, think, remember, love. In a world where utility often overshadows being, animals offer us a compass. A way back to relational living - where worth is not measured in productivity, but in presence.

You've goat to be kidding: A desi 'nuskha' for teething problems: giving a baby a splash of fresh goat's milk directly from the udder, believed to relieve pain (Jaipur, 1992). Pics/copyright Raghu Rai, courtesy/Raghu Rai Archive

What of art's power to soften the soul? It could be futile to speak of cruelty towards animals via data sets. Numbers numb. But a photograph of an emaciated dog can melt defences faster than data.

A photograph of a blind horse led gently by a goat can humble pride. The right brushstroke can cause a catch in the throat. The right texture can conjure the long-forgotten feeling of warmth from a sleeping cat on a rainy afternoon in one's childhood. Art doesn't preach. It reminds. From the luminous miniatures of Mughal manuscripts to the haunting precision of Albrecht Dürer's Young Hare, artists have time and again turned to animals not just for aesthetic, but for connection. Chinese ink paintings render birds and beasts through minimalistic lines that seem to breathe on their own. Aboriginal dot paintings from Australia encode Dreamtime animal stories in constellations of colour.

Raghu Rai's first-ever photo: A baby donkey, Kurukshetra, 1965

In Japan's Edo period, artists like Ito Jakuchu captured roosters and butterflies with an almost reverent luminosity - beings that move between heaven and soil. Why this persistent return to animal forms in art? It is because animals carry a liminality. They are of this world, yet apart from it. They reflect human emotion, while remaining mysteriously the Other. And so, they invite us to cross the veil - into empathy, into reverence. Art gives us the courage to see animals differently. Not as objects, but as co-dwellers.

Alone amid devastation: Trees were cut down in Periyar National Park, wild elephants stood isolated, 1991

When a child sketches a rabbit, she is not learning anatomy. She is practising tenderness. An emotion that her parents and her school will condition her to unlearn. When an artist etches the eyes of a tiger, she is not merely studying form - she is asking, ‘Do you see me too?' This book, like all true acts of art, leans into that question. It doesn't present animals as perfect or picturesque. It offers them as they are: layered, mysterious, dignified, wounded, alive. It gives them space to be, not only as aesthetic subjects, but as moral ones - beings whose existence demands something more from us than just admiration. It demands recognition. There is a saying from the Baoulé people of West Africa: ‘The animal knows more than you do.' It is not a joke. It is a warning against arrogance, against the illusion that only humans have intelligence or are cerebral.

A look back at the 1982 Asian Games: In 1982, 34 elephants were transported to New Delhi from Kerala, for the opening ceremony of the Asian Games. The mascot for the games, ‘Appu', was a baby elephant

Animals know things we have forgotten - how to wait, how to be present, how to trust instinct, how to belong without explanation. This knowledge is not any lesser. It is, in fact, much older, more grounded. Through this book, this timeless power becomes visible again. Not through sentimental pleas, but through imagery, symbolism and stories immersed in soulfulness. This is a gallery of witnesses, for witnessing. Each work is a heartbroken elegy, a love letter, a quiet roar. You may find yourself weeping at a donkey's downturned eyes. Or smiling at a pig snuffling in the mud, unabashed. You may find something of your own wild self in the curled paw of a lazing leopard. And you may begin to reminisce - what it felt like to kneel beside a dog and forget your sorrows. What it meant when a butterfly landed on your arm - as if to remind you that stillness has value.

Let this book be that reminder. By no account, though, is this a gentle book. It shouts. It makes you feel guilty. It will speak like the animals it honours - steadily, with grace and gravity. Let it do what art is meant to do: not change your mind but awaken your heart. And in that awakening, may you begin to see the world as it always was - alive, interconnected, trembling with presence.

About Raghu Rai

Raghu Rai was one of India's most influential and legendary photojournalists. Rai was awarded the Padma Shri in 1972 for documenting the Bangladesh war and refugees. Among other honours, he was also recognised for wildlife photography, with the ‘Photographer of the Year' title in the US in 1992 for the story ‘Human Management of Wildlife in India', published in National Geographic.

A bull, Jaipur, 2012

In 2019, Rai became the first laureate photographer of Académie Des Beaux Art in Paris - one of the highest awards in photography ever given to a living photographer. He passed away on April 26, 2026.

1972
Year in which Raghu Rai was awarded the Padma Shri