archives in india

8/6/2019 Archives in India

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Archives in India

by S.N. PRASADThe eventful centuries of India's long history has left behind a huge quantityof precious archival material in more than a dozen distinct languages, manydifferent scripts, in various states of preservation, and scattered throughoutthe country. Much of the documentation belonging to the pre-Europeanperiod of Indian history is to be found in private custody, in the families of theold nobility, business houses, and religious institutions. Some records of thepre-European period are also available in organized archival repositories, par-ticularly those connected with the old princely houses, such as the StateArchives of Andhra Pradesh (previously Hyderabad State) and Rajasthan.Continuous series of archives of the post-European period are available inarchival repositories established by the European powers such as those at Goa,Madras and Calcutta. The Goa archives has regular series of records datingback to the early days of the Portuguese occupation from the beginning of theseventeenth century; the regular records series in the National Archives ofIndia begin with the middle of the eighteenth century; records of the Dutchand French administrations in India are also available and have been supple-mented by the acquisition of some microfilms from the former colonialpowers.

Under its federal structure, India has no monolithic archives organisation;in other words, the National Archives of Indian has no administrative or tech-nical control over the score of State Archives in the country. Each StateArchives is considered an integral part of the governmental machinery of theState concerned, and the subject of archives figures in the Indian Constitutionin the "States' List" and not in the "Central List" or even the "ConcurrentList". There is, therefore, an obvious problem of maintaining unified archivaldoctrine and common archival practices throughout the country. This problemis being tackled through the Indian Historical Records Commission (IHRC),established as early as 1919. This Commission, with the Union Minister forEducation and Culture as its president, and the Director of the NationalArchives of India as its Member Secretary, brings together archivists, scholarsand administrators at an all-India level. National archival policy, and evendetails such as publication programmes, access rules, and preparation of dif-ferent types of reference media, are discussed and decided at the annual ses-sions of the Commission. The recommendations of the Commission, however,are not binding on the National and State Archives organisations, although the

Archivaria, Number 7 (Winter 1978)O All rights reserved


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ARCHIVES I N I N D I A 53recommendations do carry substantial weight and are very carefully con-sidered.

Details of archival practices and doctrines are discussed and settled in theNational Committee of Archivists (NCA) which has the Director of theNational A rchives as its chairm an a nd heads of each of the State Archives asmem bers. A lthough the NC A also has an advisory role, i ts decisions have verygreat weight in professional matters . The I H RC a nd the NC A thus provide ef-fective coordination and unified guidance in archival work throughout thecountry. This somewhat loose organisation is considered the best system forIndia since some of the State Archives are st i l l quite undeveloped, and thesame yardsticks and practices ca nno t be applied in toto to each archives.

Front view, National Archives of India, Janpath, Ne w Delhi.The Imperial Records Department (IRD) was created in 1891 at Calcutta,which was then the seat of the central government. W hen the capital moved t oNew Delhi, the IR D also moved there in abo ut 1930. After In dia achieved in-dependence in 1947, the Imperial Records Department was renamed theNational Archives of India. Ho used in a massive stone building of its own , theNa tiona l Archives of Ind ia toda y has twenty-six kilome tres or sixteen miles ofshelving cramm ed with records. I t has two regional branches, a t Bho pal an dJaipur. The total s taff of the National Archives numbers approximately 550;about half of the personnel consists of professionals with graduate or post-gradua te degrees. The total ann ual budget is approximately six mill ion Indianrupees (sl ightly more th an C an . $850,000). Althou gh there is no archival law,the Natio nal Archives has the responsibility fo r records managem ent in all thefive hundred agencies and departm ents of the Governm ent of In dia scatteredthro ug hou t the country. T his responsibil ity, enunciated in the Archival PolicyResolution issued with Ca bine t appro val in 1972, is binding on all agencies an ddepartments of the Government of India. The Legislature and the Judiciaryare not covered by the Archival Policy Resolution.


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Preamble to the Constitution of India adopted by the Constituent Assembly, 26November 1949. (National Archives of India)


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In keeping with this responsibility, the National Archives has a RecordsManagement wing concerned with the creat ion, indexing, recording, and ap-praisal of the records of the Governm ent of Ind ia before their t ransfer to theNational Archives. This aspect is headed by a Deputy Director with three As-sistant Directors of Archives and qualified professional staff to assist him. Afourth Assistant Director is in charge of the Records Division, and is con-cerned with the maintenance of noncurrent records transferred to theNationa l Archives, prepara t ion of their reference media where necessary, andthe supply of records to government departm ents an d research scholars. Yetanother Assistant Director deals solely with the old records in oriental lan-guages in which Persian figures prominently. The publication of selectedrecords is the responsibility of another division under an Assistant Director.On e Assistant D irector is charged with run ning the Inst i tute of Archival Train-ing which provides a one-year diploma course, a one-year correspondencecourse, and a brief cert i f icate course in archives administrat ion and recordsmanagement. The National Archives has offered such training faci l i t ies forseveral decades, and since it is the only archival training available in this partof the world, trainees of m any developing countries-from the Philippines inthe east to Nigeria in the west-have taken adv antage of this educ ation. Th eNa tiona l Archives charges no fees whatsoever for this training.

The Preservat ion and Reprography Division are headed by two AssistantDirectors with fully qualified conservation scientists working under theirsupervision. Althoug h the Preservat ion Division of the Nation al Archives hasa huge hydraulic press for lam ination, in ad dit ion to the electrically operatedmo dern laminating machine, greater emphasis is placed o n the hand lam ina-tion process (solvent lamination) developed in the National Archives itselfsome years ago. This method is favoured by all the developing countries be-cause i t is labo ur intensive an d requires no im ported a nd cost ly machines. TheReprography Division is equipped with several heavy duty and two portablemicrofi lm cameras, in addit ion to two quick copying machines. Super minia-turizat ion equipm ent and autom atic dat a processing have yet to make their ap-pearance in the Nationa l Archives of In dia.The vast bulk of the records holdings in archival repositories in India natu-rally deal with events an d developm ents within the coun try, docu me nting everyfacet of the l ife of the people an d the act ivi ties of the governm ent a nd otherinstitutions. H owe ver, the record s of the erstwhile colonial powers su ch as theBri t ish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, contain substantial material ofinterest to othe r countries. In this conne ction, it may be recalled that the Po r-tuguese ruled their entire Eastern E mp ire from G oa , the seat of the Portugue seviceroy, an d tha t the interests of the Bri tish East India Co m pan y, with head-quar ters at Calcut ta , extended f ro m Egypt an d Aden in the west to Hon g Kongin the east . The holdings of the G oa Archives and of the N ational Archives ofIndia, therefore, contain valuable material on most of the countries of thispart of the world. Records concerning Canada are negligible in comparison.There a re only a few docu me nts from the second half of the nineteenth centuryper tain ing to Ca nad a amon g the Foreign Depar tmen t records in the Nat ionalArchives of In dia. For exam ple, there is a com plaint by Can adia n missionariesin 1883 against the Holkar, one of the major princely states, about hinderingmissionaries from carrying on their work. There was a Canadian Mission


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I l luminated Bhutanese docum ent . A letter dated 27 November I836 from the King ofBhutan (ruler of an independent kingdom in the north-east of the Indian sub-continent). The decoration represents rare specimens of the Indo- Tibetan style ofpainting. (Foreign D epar tm ent , Or iginal receipt N o. 91B, 14April 1837)


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A R C H I V E S I N I N D I A 57

School, at Holkar's capital, Indore, which received grants from Imperialrevenues till 1885. With the arrival of greater contact and better communica-tions, there are comparatively more documents of Canadian interest in thetwentieth century records.Generally speaking, the thirty-year rule applies to archival institutions inIndia although each repository frames its own regulation. Certain types ofrecords concerning the border areas are not yet open to scholars even thoughthe records are more than thirty years old. Foreigners wishing to consult therecords in archival repositories require prior clearance from the government.The National Archives of India and the other major repositories help scholarsto obtain typed or photo copies of excerpts from records. Finding aids aregenerally, but not uniformally, adequate, and the trained and experiencedstaff in the research rooms provide assistance to scholars in locating therecords of their interest.Archival publications are produced by all the major repositories. The Natio-nal Archives of India, for example, has brought out nineteen volumes of theFort William-India House Correspondence, to make available to scholarsthese important documents in their own libraries. Two more volumes of thisseries are awaited to complete the publication programme. Publications toJune 1978 of the National Archives include the following:-Fort William-India House correspondence. Between Court of Direc-tors in London and the Fort William Council at Calcutta, 1748-1800.Twenty-one volumes are planned of which eighteen have so far beenpublished as public letters, political and secret letters, and militaryletters. Each is edited by a noted historian and contains a comprehen-sive introduction, copious notes, select bibliography, exhaustiveindex, and illustrations.- rowne correspondence. A collection of letters written to or receivedfrom Warren Hastings, John Macpherson and others by JamesBrowne, Hastings' personal envoy to the court of Shah Alam 11, 20April 1782 to 6 October 1785.- elections from educational records. From 1781 to 1907 coveringreports on aspects of Indian education, including development of uni-versity (1860-1887) and technical (1886-1907) education.- alendar of Persian correspondence. Contains English summaries ofletters exchanged between the Indian Governors-General, East IndianCompany agents and Indian rulers, chiefs and notables, 1759-1795.-Descriptive lists and indexes. Of mutiny papers at Bhopal, 1857-1859(four volumes), Secret department records, 1776-1780, and Foreignand Political department records, 178 1-1783.-Proceedings of the Indian Historical Records Commission. Covering1919-1920, 1924-1925, 1948-1951, 1953-1958, 1960, 1966, 1970-1971,1973, 1975-1976.-Indian Travels of Trevenot and Caveri. Two accounts of Europeanobservations in seventeenth century Indians.- ld Fort William at the Black Hole (1 904).- epoy recruitment in the Old Madras Army (1923).- atalogue of historical maps of the survey of India, 1700-1900. Con-tains 7,949 maps in the custody of the National Archives of India.


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TWO r n e ~ I i i t ( I I o I I h e trul on [hefaangpage belonged to M.rllramP I [ [ mherst, Governor General 1823-1828, w~rhhelegend In Persian. (National Archives of l n d ~ a )- he Indian Archives. 1947-1949 (qua rterly ), 1949- (half-yearly).-National Reports of Private Records. An all-Indian inventory of thearchival wealth in private ownership based o n da ta forw arded by dif-ferent states, 1959-A guide to the Nation al Archives, ann ual reports from 1955, brochures, a ndcomm ittee proceedings of the Nationa l Com mittee of Archives are also avail-able. The National Archives also has published the bi-annual journal TheIndian Archives for the last several decades. Most of the publications are soldon subsidized prices to promote academic research and The Indian Archivesjournal is obtained by many foreign institutions in exchange for their ownpublications.

Although the National Archives and many of the State Archives are old,well organized an d large institutions, they face num erous diff iculties and pro b-lems relating generally to the overall national as well as the local contexts. Inthe nation al context there is an imba lance since official records of the colonial


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rulers completely overshadow records of the Indian rulers. The records of thepre-European period, even where not destroyed, have yet to be centralized andare still lying scattered in private hands. Many of the rulers of the erstwhileprincely states have taken away the State records as their private property. Theprivate papers of eminent Indians have also yet to be collected and centralized,although the National Archives and some other institutions have made a goodbeginning here. This situation has resulted in most research work being basedalmost wholly upon the records of the colonial administrations, making diffi-cult the reinterpretation of modern Indian history from the Indian viewpoint.The Antiquities Act, which recently came into force, regulates the export ofold records along with other antiquities. The problem remains, though, ofacquiring and preserving records of historical, sentimental, or aesthetic valuewithout violating the rights of private ownership.The bewildering diversity of the Indian civilisation has left behind records inmore than a dozen different Indian languages and scripts which differ signifi-

cantly from their modern and current versions. Scholars having command ofthe old languages and scripts, such as Persian in shikasta script, Modi-Marathi, and Oriya, are fast declining in numbers. Even the archival institu-tions are finding it difficult to locate persons familiar with these ancient lan-guages and scripts. While no realistic solution of the general problem is insight, it is proposed t o encourage the study of the old languages and scripts byarchivists through a grant of special language pay.Much archival material relevant to the history of India is to be found in theold colonial countries. In some cases, such as the French, records were physi-cally removed from India before the colonial regime ended. In other cases,such as the British, documents were acquired and taken away, or created by


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ARCHIVARIA

Transport of sick and w ounded f rom the battlefield. Illustration from a report to theMilitary Department from the Adjutant General of the Army, 24 August 1846.(Military Departm ent, Consultation Nos. 87-92, 10October 1846)agencies of the Ind ian Gov ernmen t located in the colonial country. T he form ercolonia l powers consistent ly refuse t o re turn records t o India . The problem ofthese "migrated archives" has come to the fore in recent years an d UNESCOis presently engaged in s tudying this problem and suggesting possible solu-tions.*

Within the country , a rchival ins t itu t ions have to com pete for funds withother pressing national priorit ies l ike health an d li teracy program mes, an d theremov al of poverty. Th ere is also the usual public ap ath y and bureaucratic in-difference towards archival development. No drastic improvement in thissituation app ears l ikely in the near futur e. It is only the patient an d persis tentefforts of archivists , supported by the growing voice of enlightened nationalin teres t an d the world com munity o f scholars , tha t can ensure the proper pre-servation and util isation of the marvellous archival wealth of India .* See report on "Seventeenth International Round Table Conference", Archivaria 5 (Winter

1977-781: 156-7.

Bien que tres morcelees, les archives de 1'Inde ne constituent pas m oins qu'un richeensemble docum entaire redig6 en plusieurs lang ues, encore ma1 connu et peu exploit6du fait de la p6nurie de personnel qualifie. L'auteur decrit le travail des Archives natio-nales et signale les moyens mis en oeuvre pour recuperer les archives du regimeimperial britannique.

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