Huma Mulji | Dry Cleaners

The term batman in the Pakistan Army dates from the period of the British Indian Army. In the Pakistan Army today, civilian personnel are employed in this role and are designated as Non-Combatant Bearer, meaning the batman is not a soldier or part of the fighting cadre of the army, but works only as a personal servant to each officer.

Photographed over a number of years in Lahore Cantonment – a military garrison district within the city of Lahore but under the independent governance of the Pakistani army – Huma Mulji’s photographic Series Dry Cleaners, brings to light the lives of ordinary people the artist encountered in her day-to-day life, who service the army officers.

In the Cantonment in Lahore, these Batmen continue to carry their masters’ dry cleaned and ironed uniforms, back and forth throughout the day. Holding the uniforms of military officers on their back, while walking next to their bicycles or riding on them, the images seem to be a quiet but poignant metaphor for a persistent social hierarchy: the emblem of the power and prestige on the back of these orderlies a signifier of how an elite class’ inheritance of the legacy of colonialism conspires with societal forces to reinforce systems of power.