New Delhi: The National Archives of India is set to digitise genealogical records of families maintained by priests at several religious centres in India.
These records will taken from the pandas (priests) from Gaya, Kashi, Prayagraj, Kedarnath, Ujjain, and Badrinath.
“This is traditional knowledge, which has been put together in some pothis which tells about generations of the families. Now NAI is harnessing this traditional knowledge and community archives,” said Arun Singhal, IAS and director general of NAI, while speaking at the meeting of the South and West Asian Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (SWARBICA). The event was organised at the India International Centre (IIC) on 20 February.
The pothis that Singhal talked about face the risk of decay, so NAI is trying to digitise all this information.
NAI has started approaching the priests across India. But in most of the places, priests have several apprehensions to share the data.
“Priests in Ujjain have agreed to this. Soon, we will start the digitisation of the records there. It can become a very valuable database,” said Singhal, adding that such records exist at more than 25 places in India.
The director general was joined by Union Minister of Culture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Abdur Rashid, director of archives and library, Bangladesh, Naoroibam Raju Singh, deputy director of archives, and delegates from Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Pakistan and Iran joined the SWARBICA meeting virtually at the IIC.
“The digitised archival records are going to be the lighthouse guiding our country and society in the times to come. With each passing day, our responsibility towards archival records increases manifold,” said Shekhawat.
Shekhawat added that India has a shared culture with Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Pakistan.
“Even our border with Nepal is open and we have a relationship of roti-beti,” he said, adding that if India achieves the capability of digitisation, then its benefits should be shared with our neighbours.
The minister highlighted that all the records before Independence are shared between these nations and hold collective significance.
“Many pages of our history are linked together,” he said.
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Documenting oral history
Last year, NAI completed its first overseas project by digitising and archiving the documents of the Indian diaspora in Oman. In the late 18th century, significant numbers of Gujarati merchants migrated to Oman. More than 7,000 documents in English, Arabic, Gujarati and Hindi from private collections of Indian merchant families were scanned and digitised in 2024.
“They have old documents which establish the trade patterns and the concessions which were handed out,” said Singhal, adding that with Oman’s consent, India set up a small team there and digitised their documents. The findings were released as the Oman collection.
Apart from the documents, NAI also has a record of oral histories.
Unlike Western scholars, Indian historians started focusing on oral histories late. The Prime Ministers’ Museum & Library, Ashoka University, and Ambedkar University are repositories of oral history archives. In 2013, a group of independent oral history practitioners formed the nation’s first Oral History Association.
“While we were digitising the records, they [Indian migrants who settled in Oman] said we have many oral memories but no documents. They asked why don’t you record our oral testimonies also. So we started,” said Singhal. In 2023, it was the first time oral histories were archived since the inception of NAI in 1891.
According to Singhal, India is going to see a mammoth digitisation programme of archives.
“We are working on the digitisation of 300 million pages. It is the most ambitious programme of its kind in the entire world,” he said.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)