Archives and Museums 11

B.A.
(Programme) Semester-IV History
SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC)

Archives and Museum
Study Material : Unit 1-3
SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
Department of History
Editor : Sh. Prabhat Kumar

Under Graduate Course
SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC)

Archives and Museum
Contents
Unit 1 : Definition of Archives and Museum Dr. Sujay Biswas

Unit 2
Lesson-1 : Contribution of Western Scholars Documentation
and Management of Indian Heritage Vikash Kumar Singh
Lesson-2 : History and Development of Archives and
Museums in India Rohan
Unit 3 : Conserving the Future of the Past in Present: The Process of
Documentation & Preservation of Records in India Rohan
Editor:
Sh. Prabhat Kumar
SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
5, Cavalry Lane, Delhi-110007
Unit 1
Definition of Archives and Museum

Dr. Sujay Biswas
Assistant Professor
Department of History, Ramjas College
University of Delhi, Delhi, India
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Archives
1.2.1 Origin of the Term ‘Archives’
1.2.2 Definition by Eminent Archivists
1.2.3 Types of Archives
1.3 Museum
1.3.1 ICOM Museum Definition throughout History
1.3.2 Types of Museums
1.4 Differences between Archives, Museums and Library
1.4.1 Procurement/Acquisition of Items
1.4.2 Types of Collections
1.4.3 Organisation of Collections
1.4.4 Description of Collections
1.4.5 Access to Collections
1.4.6 Commercial Value
1.5 Let’s Sum Up
1.6 Further Readings
1.0 Objectives
After completing this unit, you will be able to:
• Discuss the definitions of archives and museum;
• Examine the different types of archives and museums; and
• Analyse the difference between archives, museums, and libraries.
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1.1 Introduction
In this unit, we shall talk about how “archives” have been defined differently across time,
from “arsenals of law” in the eighteenth century to “arsenals of history” in the twentieth
century. In addition to this, it analyses the various formats of archival institutions. Similarly,
the unit delves into the connotation of the word “museum” and the several classifications of
museums. The last section of the lesson examines the commonalities and differences between
archives, museums, and libraries.
The “National Archives of India,” located in New Delhi, is widely regarded as India’s
most important archive of historical documents. It has established four regional archive
repositories in the cities of Pondicherry, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, and Bhopal. Every state
maintains its very own archives. India is also a nation with a wealth of culture, tradition,
science, and antiques. The country’s many museums and art galleries preserve a significant
amount of India’s rich cultural history. The “National Museum” in New Delhi is the
country’s premier museum. Over and above the state-run art galleries and museums, many art
galleries and museums run by non-profit organisations showcase India’s rich cultural history.
The National Library in Kolkata is India’s most extensive single library, and it acts both as a
storehouse and a repository for all of the country’s published content. It has also amassed a
significant collection of literature from other countries. In addition, two more national
libraries exist: the National Medical Library and the National Science Library, both located in
New Delhi.
1.2 Archives
Since India has a history documented for thousands of years, the nation has always
maintained some kind of system for keeping records. The records of the Buddhist sangha,
which date back to about 600 B.C.E., are the first documented evidence of maintaining
archives. However, wars destroyed a significant number of ancient India’s records. Only a
small number of records that people preserved have stood the test of time. The small number
of records is primarily attributable to the ineffective record-keeping procedures of the period.
The British colonial government was responsible for introducing India to many modern
archival and records management practices. The Imperial Record Department was established
on 11 March 1891 in Calcutta, marking the inception of archives as an institutionalised
depository for non-current documents. The colonial authority was not simply interested in
record-keeping for day-to-day administration; instead, it was also interested in developing an
invasive realm of information about the people over whom they exercised power.
1.2.1 Origin of the Term ‘Archives’
It is a common practice to start any discussion about “archives” by examining the term’s
origins. The English word “archives” comes from the Greek term “arkhe.” The word “arkhe”
may indicate “beginning,” “origin,” or “first cause.” It can also imply “first place,” “power,”
“sovereignty,” or “empire.” It can also signify “magistracy” or “office.” One gets terms like
“archaic” (which means belonging to an earlier period) and “archaeology” from the first
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group of English meanings. Words such as “architect, archbishop, etc.,” may be derived from
the second meaning. The third meaning is associated with the Greek term “archeion,” a
“government building.” The English term “archives” comes from the word “archeion.”
Archives refer to the records that a private or public agency produces and the physical
location for preserving such records.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “archives” refers to the physical
location where public documents and other historical records are stored and the documents
and records themselves. Throughout the eighteenth century, “archives” was understood as “a
place where ancient records, charters or evidences are kept.” In 1770, Samuel Johnson
described archives as “the place where records of ancient writings are kept.” In the mid-
nineteenth century, another English lexicographer named Charles Richardson defined
“archives” as a place that stored public documents. However, it was not until the twenty-first
century that the term “archives” started to refer to both the physical location that holds
records and the records themselves.
Since “archives” are just another term for “records,” it is essential to investigate the
meaning of the word “record” as well. The root of the English word “record” is Latin. It is
composed of the syllables “re+cor” or “re+cordis.” “Re” translates to “again” or “back” in
Latin; “cor” translates to “heart,” while “cordis” means “mind.” Therefore, a “record” is a
type of media on which anything is written for it to be remembered. There is yet another
term, “document,” that needs investigation since the word “document” is often spoken in
conjunction with the word “records” when talking about “archives.” The term “document”
comes from the Latin word “docere,” which means “to teach.” However, the term
“document” refers to the act of penning an inscription that provides proof, particularly in
legal and commercial contexts. Documents are understood to be anything that is written or
engraved, and they become records only after they accumulate in the ordinary course of
carrying out activities and are then stored for future reference. While referring to a collection
of things, one uses the term “records,” whereas the word “document” refers to a specific item
of the genus.
Check Your Progress 1
Note: (i) Write your answers in the area that has been provided below.
Q1. Discuss the origin of the term ‘archives’.
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Q2. Analyse the meaning of the words ‘record’ and ‘document’.
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1.2.2 Definition by Eminent Archivists
R. Fruin, J.A. Feith, and S. Muller, in their 1898 Dutch publication “Manual for the
Arrangement and Description of Archives,” defined “archives” as the collection of “the
written documents, drawing and printed matter, officially received or produced by an
administrative body or one of its officials, in so far as these documents were intended to
remain in the custody of that body or of that official.” According to England’s Hilary
Jenkinson’s “A Manual of Archives Administration” (1922), “archives are documents which
formed part of an official transaction and were preserved for official reference.” And “a
document, which may be said to belong to the class of archives, is one which was drawn up
or used in the course of an administrative or executive transaction (whether public or private)
of which itself formed a part and subsequently preserved in their own custody for their own
information by the person or persons responsible for that transaction and their legitimate
successors.” Six years later Eugenio Casanova, an Italian archivist, in his “Archivistica”
(1928) characterised “archives” as “the orderly accumulation of documents which was
created in the course of its activity by an institution or an individual, and which are preserved
for the accomplishment of political, legal, or cultural purpose by such an institution or the
individual.”
Adolf Brenneke, a German archivist, provided the following definition of “archives” in
his book Archivkunde (1953): Archives are “the whole of papers and documents growing out
of legal or business activities of a physical or legal body which are intended for permanent
preservation at a particular place as the sources and evidence of the past.” In 1956, T.R.
Schellenberg defined “archives” as “those records of any public or private institution which
are adjudged worthy of permanent preservation for reference and research purposes and
which have been deposited or have been selected for deposit in an archival institution.” By
examining the definitions of archives proposed by archivists, such as Schellenberg and Hilary
Jenkinson, within the English-speaking countries, we may be able to recognise a shift in their
descriptions. Jenkinson’s description is authoritative; that is, that archives are to be retained
by the individual authors either in their possession or in the custody of their authorised
successors for the creator’s administrative reference. But Schellenberg’s definition is
expansive in that the agencies that created the records are not always the custodians of the
archives, and Schellenberg also incorporates research values into the archives.
In 1964, a well-known American archivist Ernst Posner defined “archives” as “records of
a government agency or other organisation or institution having enduring values because of
the information they contain. The term also applied to the records of families and individuals,
especially if consciously organised for preservation.” When it comes to those who are
knowledgeable about archives, Mahesh Narain at the National Archives of India stands out as
a distinct figure due to his lucid explanation of records and records in Hindi. Narain states:
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“Jo likh diya who lekh hai. Jo rakh liya wo abhilekh hai.” (“Record is that which is written.
Archives is then its portion retained.”)
Archivists have recommended that the meaning of the word “archives” be determined by
consulting a dictionary of computer terminology in light of the development of records that
are readable by machines. Michael Roper has offered a definition along these lines, which is
as follows: Archives are “an organised collection of records, the relationship of which may be
that of common purpose, format or source.” In addition, Roper distinguishes between
conventional documents and files stored on computers. Roper is quite correct when he points
out that people wrote traditional documents in various languages on various media. The
interpretation of these documents calls for a variety of specialised abilities. However, “the
computer file has no separate physical existence, although it will be held for convenience of
use on some storage medium such as magnetic tapes or magnetic disc, and it cannot be read
or used without the assistance of an appropriate assemblage of electronic equipment.”
Michael Cook, in his discussion on archives in 1986, defined “archives” as “information
media, which have been generated from within the organisation, and the management of
which has been delegated to a specialist service. The purpose of this delegation is the
preservation of the materials and the exploitation of the information in them.”
Q1. Critically analyse the changing definition of archives from “arsenals of law” in the
eighteenth century to “arsenals of history” in the twentieth century.
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1.2.3 Types of Archives
“Archives,” according to the Society of American Archivists’ “Dictionary of Archival
Education,” published in 1993-94, are “the non-current records of individuals, groups,
institutions, and governments that contain information of enduring value. Formats
represented in the modern repository include photographs, files, video and sound recordings,
computer archival tapes, and video and optical disks, as well as the more traditional
unpublished letters, diaries, and other manuscripts. Archival records are the products of
everyday activity. Researchers use them both for their administrative value and for purposes
other than those for which they were created.” The relatively extensive explanation of
archives above necessitates the following categorisation of the several kinds of archives: (a)
manuscript or printed textual material, including public records; (b) printed material; (c)
sound archives (like music, folk music, spoken word, etc.); (d) cartographic (the science or
practice of drawing maps) archives; (e) paintings, drawings and prints; (f) photographs; and
(g) motion picture film and videotape.
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Today, archival organisations can be located almost everywhere around the globe. These
institutions range from governments, universities, companies, and clubhouses to historical
associations, religious institutions, political groupings, and co-operatives. These institutions
meet the requirements of the society they are a part of, and as a result, they are subject to that
society’s norms, customs, and aspirations. There are many different kinds of archives, each of
which collects a unique set of documents and other forms of resources, such as college and
university archives, corporate archives, government archives, historical societies, museums,
religious archives, special collections, tribal archives, community archives, and digital
archives.
• College and University Archives are those types of archives that preserve items relevant
to a particular academic institution’s history. There could be a “special collections”
section in such archives. The foremost priority of college and university archives is to
cater to the requirements of their respective parent institutions and their graduates,
followed by the needs of the general public.
• Corporate Archives are archival divisions housed inside a firm or corporation and are
responsible for the management and preservation of the documents of that particular
organisation. These repositories cater to the company’s employees’ requirements and
further the firm’s objectives. Depending on the firm’s regulations and the number of
archival personnel available, corporate archives provide varying degrees of access to the
general public to the documents they house.
• Government Archives have collections of national, state, and local government
documents. The general public has access to the government’s archives.
• Historical Societies strive to preserve and increase interest in the histories of an area, a
historical era, non-government organisations, or a topic. The collections housed inside
historical societies often centre on a particular region or town, and they may also be
responsible for the upkeep of government documents.
• Museums and archives work toward the same objective: to maintain the integrity of
historically significant objects. However, museums often prioritise displaying such things
and keeping collections of artefacts or works of art instead of books and documents. A
museum can be a part of any of the several kinds of repositories described in this list, or
museums might operate as independent establishments. Similarly, independent museums
may have archives inside their walls.
• Religious Archives are archives that pertain to the traditions and beliefs or systems of a
major religion, sects within a religion, or specific worship places. These repositories may
grant access to the items they preserve to the public, or they may exist to serve members
of the religion or institution responsible for their creation.
• Special Collection refers to an archive housed in various establishments and may include
items donated by people, families, or organisations regarded as historically significant.
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Special collections usually have a wide variety of subject matter, such as technology,
medicine, law, literature, and fine art. Most of the time, a special collections archive will
be a department housed inside a library. This department will store the library’s oldest or
most priceless original texts, publications, and records of local histories for communities
in the surrounding area.
• Tribal Archives include records about the history of their regional governments and
cultures. Researchers from the general public may access tribal archives; however, certain
materials may only be available to tribal people, tribal community leaders, or other
specially designated groups. Such access will depend on the cultural protocols that the
tribe follows regarding the dissemination of knowledge.
• Community Archives often concentrate on the history of the surrounding area and the
populations that live there, such as LGBTQ persons, immigrant communities, or racial
and ethnic groupings. Members of historically disadvantaged groups, who do not believe
their history is reflected or supported by established government and educational
institutions, set up these archives. Small, community-based groups are responsible for
collecting, preserving, and managing these archival records.
• Digital Archives are developed and managed by the institutions mentioned above, with
content scanned or digitised from their more extensive physical collection holdings.
These archival institutions create such archives to serve as online repositories of digital
content accessible only through the internet.
Q1. Discuss the different types of archives.
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1.3 Museum
A museum is a complex that preserves and displays historical, scientific, aesthetic, or cultural
artefacts. The term “museum” is of ancient origin derived from the Greek word “mouseion,”
which signifies the “seat of the Muses” – the nine deities of Greek mythology, each of which
is associated with a particular school of thought or a quiet place for contemplation. The word
“museum” originates from its Latin translation of “mouseion.” During Roman times, people
primarily used the term “museum” to refer to establishments where philosophical debates
took place. The magnificent Museum of Alexandria, which Ptolemy I Soter established at the
beginning of the third century B.C.E. and included a college of academics as well as a library,
was primarily an institution that served as a model for universities than an establishment that
was responsible for preserving and explaining the tangible aspects of history. In Europe,
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during the fourteenth century, people brought back the term “museum” into usage to
characterise the collection that Lorenzo de’ Medici had amassed in Florence. However,
instead of referring to a physical structure, the word communicated the idea that the concept
was all-encompassing. In Europe during the seventeenth century, the term “museum” was
used to refer to collections of oddities and antiquities. In Denmark, Ole Worm’s cabinet of
curiosities in Copenhagen was referred to as a museum, while in England, people visiting
John Tradescant’s curiosity cabinet in Lambeth referred to the display there as a museum.
Tradescant’s collection, which Elias Ashmole had acquired, was given to the University of
Oxford in 1675. Tradescant’s collection was housed in a structure explicitly erected it. Not
long after the museum opened its doors to the general public in 1683, the establishment began
to be called the Ashmolean Museum. The notion of the museum as an institution to conserve
and show collections became evident to the ordinary people with the founding of the British
Museum in 1753.
When the term “museum” was used in the nineteenth century and throughout a
significant portion of the twentieth century, it referred to a facility that contained cultural
artefacts and allowed the general public access to such artefacts. The idea of a museum in
India did not emerge until the late eighteenth century, with the 1793 founding of the Asiatic
Society. The Society decided to construct a museum for the study of oriental studies with
items accessible from a variety of academic fields. Thus, the first museum ever formed in
India was the Indian Museum in 1814. Later on, as museums adapted to society, the focus on
the building became less critical. Open-air museums, which consist of a collection of
structures or monuments conserved as artefacts, and eco-museums, which explore all
elements of an outdoor setting, are now being constructed. Today, there are electronic
versions of museums on the internet. These virtual museums may or may not have real-world
equivalents, but they provide advantages to traditional institutions. Virtual museums rely on
the actual museum for collecting, maintaining, and interpreting the physical objects on
display. Thus, a museum is an establishment that preserves its collection of artefacts and
other things of scientific interest, historical, cultural, or artistic. It then displays its assortment
of objects for public inspection in a way that may be either permanent or temporary.
1.3.1 ICOM Museum Definition throughout History
What do we mean when we talk about museums? A permanent establishment or a venue with
several voices? To make an income, or not? Are they accessible to the people, or are they
more concerned with fulfilling the needs of the cultural elite? Are museums dedicated to
social justice, and do they serve the needs of society? Do they improve their viewer’s
comprehension of the world, as well as educate the viewers themselves? Do museums protect
people’s memories and try to conserve humanity’s intangible and tangible legacy? What are
their most critical roles in the twenty-first century, and what distinguishing qualities do they
have? Over the last several decades, museum experts and professionals have been trying to
find answers to these problems and many other questions. But a few of these concerns have
been circulating for quite some time. To this end, the “International Council of Museums”
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(ICOM) accepted the task of defining a museum shortly after the organisation’s establishment
in 1946.
Since its founding in 1946, ICOM has made defining certain museum-related words and
ideas one of its primary focus areas. ICOM came up with its definition of the meaning of the
word “museum” in the 1950s. However, this definition has continued to evolve throughout
the organisation’s existence. In the late 1950s, Georges Henri Rivière, ICOM’s first director,
highlighted the significance of the definition of a museum following the ICOM laws. At the
time, he was working to disseminate the words and perspectives of ICOM worldwide. The
museum definition proposed was: “The museum is a permanent establishment, administered
in the general interest, for the purpose of preserving, studying, enhancing by various means
and, in particular, of exhibiting to the public for its delectation and instruction groups of
objects and specimens of cultural value: artistic, historical, scientific and technological
collections, botanical and zoological gardens and aquariums, etc.” This definition conveyed
the concept of a museum in the most conventional sense possible. ICOM, which authored this
document, was primarily constituted of museum directors belonging to European countries.
These museum directors envisioned these “establishments” (or entities) in their presumed
permanence, and their principal objective was to display their repositories of objects deemed
to have some cultural significance. This definition voiced the most traditional concept of the
museum. It did not take long before people started raising concerns about the functions and
nature of this notion of the museum. In the initial 1970s, such ideals, espoused by museum
executives and professionals, were called into question when ICOM opened its platforms to
the former colonies.
Stanislas Adotevi, a Beninese, marked a period of profound contemplation on the
function of museums in post-colonial society at the ninth ICOM General Conference, which
took place in 1971 in France. Museums, he acknowledged, are “theoretically and practically
attached to a world (the European world), to a class (the cultivated bourgeoisie),” and “to a
certain cultural perspective.” Adotevi was crucial in reshaping the foundation of a theoretical
and political discussion at the core of ICOM, which played a significant part in developing
upcoming revisions to the museum concept. One year later, within the framework of the
prestigious “Santiago de Chile Round Table” and spurred by a movement which was self-
proclaimed as museum’s “decolonisation”, several members of the UNESCO and the ICOM
discussed “the role of museums in relation to the social and economic needs of modern-day
Latin America.”
During the same decade, many ICOM committees got together on establishing a
collaborative terminological research project. CIDOC (Comité International pour la
Documentation/ International Committee for Documentation) supervised this project and
invited ICOFOM (International Committee for Museology) to participate in the project
beginning in 1977. This initiative aimed to produce a vocabulary for museology following the
requirements of ICOM. It was based primarily on the museum professional realities of
nations like the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. However, its
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findings did not apply or could be translated into most other countries worldwide. At this
point, ICOM would recognise the difficulties of defining its core lexicon globally due to
language and cultural traditions differences.
ICOM would suggest a revised definition of the word museum, which the delegates of its
member countries agreed on in 1974 despite the challenges encountered while working on
this extensive terminology project that included numerous international committees. This
definition, in some respects, is a reiteration of the discussions that took place previously in
Santiago de Chile: “A museum is a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of
society and its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches,
communicates, and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material
evidence of man and his environment.” In 1974, the idea that the museum is “in the service of
society and its development” caused several conservative members to express their
disapproval in various ways. They felt this statement “an inappropriate politicisation of the
purpose of museums.” Therefore, museum experts and professionals questioned the
objectivity of the description. At the same time, other members claimed that an objective
museum was either realisable or even something that should be aspired. The definition
approved in the 1970s, though progressive, maintained the emphasis on “material evidence”
as well as on the museum’s most conventional tasks. But the definition provided by the
ICOM did not include any reference to intangible heritage, even though those new innovative
kinds of museums flourished worldwide. The eco-museums of France, the indigenous
museums of Latin America, and the neighbourhood museums of the United States of America
were examples of some of the new experimental museums.
In the end, theoretical research in museology focused on the significance of the
museums’ assemblages of physical objects, offering fresh definitions of the museum, which
forced themselves on ICOM’s traditional conceptions. For example, the British scholar
Geoffrey Lewis defined the museum as not grounded on the museum’s structure or
institutional nature but on the concept of collecting in its broadest sense. He conceived the
institution as “a support of knowledge made of material and immaterial evidence of the
cultural and natural heritage of humanity.” In this respect, a museum is a place, whether
physical or virtual, that preserves various objects to benefit the general public. A concept of
this kind is independent of the idea of an assemblage of tangible things. During the
theoretical arguments in various ICOFOM platforms, there was a tendency to think about
museums in terms that were more flexible and open. Some people refer to museums as a
“phenomenon,” while others see them as a way to “satisfy certain social needs.” In any case,
the actions of museum visitors mould museums.
Museologists worldwide have made insightful observations about the museum concept
due to these theoretical arguments that ICOFOM has shaped. For example, in the specific
situation of Latin America, scholars discussed a variety of definitions of the museum, each of
which called into question the universalising phrases used in international discussions.
Several writers have treated the museum idea as a political statement, using the local
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adaptations of various concepts and practise as its foundation. According to Marta Arjona
Pérez, a Cuban museologist, the museum is “an indispensable element of support for social
and cultural development.” Museums, in the eyes of the Argentinean Norma Rusconi, are
“centres of social transformation;” and Teresa Scheiner, a Brazilian, considers the museum to
be “a phenomenon related to cultural heritage of humanity, an institution created in the
service of society to represent and attribute value to this heritage by means of identification,
preservation, research and communication of material and immaterial testimonies, in all
possible ways.”
Over many years, ICOM built relationships with organisations that did not always adhere
to the generally recognised museum definition offered in 1974. As a result of the new
debates, ICOM again brought up the idea of modifying the museum definition for
consideration at the turn of the nineteenth century. In June 2003, the Executive Council
members, led by Gary Edson of the United States of America, concluded that ICOM’s criteria
for the enrollment of professionals, institutions, and services were incompatible. As a result,
they decided to revise the definition. During 2003 and 2004, in response to a request
extended by ICOM to re-evaluate the definition of a museum, several theorists affiliated with
a variety of committees proposed novel ideas and points of view for re-considering the words
and opinions contained in ICOM’s internationally recognised text for the museum. During
this period, ICOFOM was also occupied with a vocabulary project, the “Thesaurus of
Museology,” managed by André Desvallées. This initiative, which started in 1993, was to
gather the many viewpoints on more than twenty essential terminologies in museology,
including “museum.” ICOM requested a new definition of the museum at the beginning of
the 2000s. The committee decided to take on the challenge of theorising what a museum is, to
comply with their request.
At long last, from 30 June to 2 July 2005, ICOFOM members converged in Calgary,
Canada. ICOFOM transformed its yearly conference into a venue for a specialised scholastic
conversation on the museum’s definition, during which it posed a few conceptual problems
and suggested a new script for ICOM to take into account. The members of ICOFOM who
were attending the conference believed that the initial definition for the twenty-first century
must declare that: “The museum is an institution for the benefit of society, devoted to
exploring and understanding the world by researching, preserving and communicating,
notably through interpretation and exhibition, tangible and intangible evidence that
constitutes the heritage of humanity. It is a not-for-profit institution.” Concerning the
museum concept that was established and presented to the field of museology by the
Dutchman Peter van Mensch and greatly inspired by the concepts of the Czech Zbynk Z.
Stránsk, the suggested definition places a focus on the functions of investigating,
maintaining, and communicating. In addition, it was the first time that the concept of
“intangible heritage” was brought up in a normative document that attempted to define a
museum. At the conference in Calgary, ICOFOM also suggested that ICOM consider the
museum concept an ongoing work in progress because the definition needs continuous
updating following advancements in the museum discipline. Despite the continuing
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theoretical discussions that have been taking place amongst members of ICOFOM, the ICOM
has adopted a newly amended definition that includes a significant number of minor changes
to the original wording from 1974. The definition, which ICOM accepted in the twenty-first
General Conference, which took place in Vienna, Austria, in 2007, and which is currently in
effect, says that: “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society
and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches,
communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its
environment for purposes of education, study and enjoyment.” At its extraordinary general
assembly held on 24 August 2022 in Prague, ICOM approved a proposal for a new definition
of the museum. After its acceptance, the following constitutes the revised definition of an
ICOM museum: “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society
that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage.
Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability.
They [museums] operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the
participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection
and knowledge sharing.”
Q1. Examine ICOM’s definition of the museum since its establishment.
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1.3.2 Types of Museums
In any country, museums are practically varied in nature, because there are differences in
their disciplines and they have diversified authorities, which control them. Therefore, the
content and financial assistance they receive may not be of a uniform kind. Moreover, they
are different according to their area of collections; they range in size, they vary in their
purpose too, as well as in the public they seek to serve. Thus, museums can be classified
according to their collections, who runs them and the area they serve, the audiences they
serve, and the way they exhibit their collections. Along with their diverse origins, varying
philosophies, and differing roles in society, museums can be fundamentally classified
according to the nature of their collections. The most common categories are – general, art,
history, and science museums.
A museum today can be broadly divided into six categories, namely, of art, archaeology,
ethnography, natural history, science and technology, respectively with many possibly minor
sub-divisions. These again lend themselves to division into two main categories, namely, art,
archaeology and ethnography, on the one hand, and natural history, science and technology,
on the other. Of course, for consideration of financial constraints or comparative scarcity of
12
the respective collections, commonness of ownership or convenience of management,
museums can be of several multiple disciplines together. In such cases, either they grow to be
too large and cannot, in the course of time, work successfully under a unified control owing
to the inherent divergences of the disciplines involved, or they remain so small that they
cannot be fully representative of all or even most of the facets of the various disciplines they
encompass. Their growth can also be dis-balanced according to the predilection of the
curators and the authorities. Nevertheless, it is not unusual to see combinations of natural
history, art, archaeology and ethnography, especially at the regional or state levels in India.
Such museums can be broadly termed as multi-purpose or multi-disciplinary museums. Even
within the same discipline again there can be basic differences of categorisation according to
the nature of the objects such as folk arts, tribal arts, or crafts, sculpture in stone, bronze,
terracotta or ivory, paintings on palm leaf, paper, cloth, or on walls or much more broadly as
ancient, medieval or modern arts, as the case may be. Among science museums, too, different
categories exist such as museums of pure science or applied science, of mining, and
metallurgy, and technologies of a wide variety such as textile technology, printing
technology, etc.
The museums may have nomenclatures according to the authorities which own, control
and manage them, such as the central government, the state government, the universities,
colleges, municipality, private and public trusts, or individuals, as the case may be.
Depending upon their size and location, they can be very small village or town museums
called local museums; moderately large regional museums at the state capitals, or any other
large city or township, and very large national museums. In addition to these, there are many
large archaeological site museums, housing the excavated archaeological remains at ancient
sites, such as those at Jageshwar, Sachi, Sarnath, Vaisali, Lothal, Nalanda, etc., under the
Archaeological Survey of India.
There are many departmental museums under various Government departments, such as
the Museum of Forest Research Institute at Dehradun. Among the national museums mention
may be made of the National Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, the National
Gallery of Modern Art, the Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum and the Rail Transport
Museum. There are several other museums of comparable status but not under the
Government of India. The central government is building a National Museum of Man at
Bhopal. The Science and Technology Museums under the National Council of Science
Museum at Calcutta, Bangalore, Bombay and Patna, the last being the smallest of the group,
bid fare to possessing national status. The Indian Museum at Calcutta and the Salarjung
Museum at Hyderabad are fully financed by the central government but are autonomous
institutions under the control of their respective boards. These museums are also museums of
national status.
The Prince of Wales Museum of Western India at Bombay, which is a multi-purpose
museum combining the disciplines of art, archaeology and natural sciences, is one of the most
outstanding museums in this country. Yet, it is not of national status, nor under the control of
13
the central or state governments, but under a broad of trustees. Among the other important
regional or state museums in this country, mention may be made of the Government
Museum, Madras, Patna Museum, Patna, State Museum, Lucknow and the Museum and
Picture Gallery at Baroda. The Museum and Picture Gallery at Chandigarh, though not
fulfilling as yet the requisites of a State Museum, as it is still under the Union Territory, and
the Government Museum at Mathura are outstanding museums of art and archaeology, but do
not possess national status.
Among the university museums in India, mention may be made of the Asutosh Museum
of Folk Arts, Calcutta, the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, the growing Archaeological
Museum of the Deccan College, University of Poona and the Kausambi Museum at
Allahabad. Among the municipal museums the best was, of course, the Allahabad Museum.
It has since been taken over by the Government of India. The small but tidy and impressive
Zoological Museum, as an adjunct of the Zoological Gardens at Ahmedabad, is remarkable
for the quality of its presentation. Among the outstanding museums built up by private effort
are the Arthropoda Museum and Raja Kelkar Museum at Pune, and the Calico Museum (of
textiles) at Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Q1. What are the types of museums? Elaborate with examples.
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1.4 Differences between Archives, Museums and Library
There is a common perception that museums, libraries, and archival institutions are all
interrelated institutions, as archives, museums, and libraries all give off the impression of
identical repositories storing cultural treasures. But there are essential distinctions regarding
the institution’s goal, the things they gather, how they organise work, how the items are
defined, and how the institution interacts with its users. Following is a comparison that will
shed light on the primary difference that exist among the aforementioned three establishments
– archives, museum, and library.
1.4.1 Procurement/Acquisition of Items
Archivists obtain materials for archives from the original author or creator of the work.
Documents are not bought but instead donated. Archivists who have a comprehensive
understanding of documentary history pick materials having archival significance for
acquisition. They carry out the selection of documents in line with the acquisition and
appraisal rules of the archives, as well as the mandates of respective institutions. Since the
law requires that archival institutions accept the documents of certain legal persons or
14
organisations located within a particular geographic or political region, they cannot deny
access to those records. Typically, legislation imposes this obligation. The artefacts that make
up a museum may either be acquired or donated. The museum’s curator usually chooses
materials in line with the collection rules of the museum as well as the missions of the
institution. Due to the narrowly focused areas of expertise, museums constrain their ability to
amass artefacts from all over the globe. Most of the library’s books and other resources come
from publishers or independent booksellers known as library vendors. Most of the time,
libraries buy the materials they need, but they also often get large donations from private
people. Subject specialists at libraries are often responsible for selecting books and other
materials. In most cases, the selection of materials follows the regulations governing library
collections and the institution’s missions. There are no geographical constraints that bind
libraries; as a result, the libraries are free to collect literary materials from all over the world.
1.4.2 Types of Collections
The vast majority of materials in archival repositories are unpublished (that is, manuscripts,
letters, etc.). The collections consist of distinct pieces that may stand on their own or
connected in some way. In most cases, the content is one-of-a-kind, not found anywhere else.
Most of a museum’s collections are artefacts, which are non-textual and often take the form
of tangible objects like furniture, clothing, and other similar items. The material usually is
one of a kind, but there is a possibility that it could also be available elsewhere. Most library
holding items are published works (for example, journals, books, etc.). Librarians use
separate categories to organise the items in a collection. Quite frequently, library materials
are found at other places also.
1.4.3 Organisation of Collections
Archivists arrange the items in an archive consistent with the principles of provenance. They
make every effort to preserve the arrangement of documents inside a collection in the same
way its creators first arranged it. For the most part, curators organise museum artefacts in a
manner that corresponds to a predetermined topic for presentation. Thus, the museums, not
the people who created the material, are responsible for organising the displayed pieces.
Librarians arrange books and other resources in the library in categories based on their
subjects. The library, not the people who originally produced the content, is responsible for
organising the collections.
1.4.4 Description of Collections
Archivists catalogue the archival resources within a given collection or fonds according to
various distinct groupings on multiple levels (item, file, sub-series, series, fonds, etc.). A
“multi-level” archival summary, also known as a finding aid, is created by linking together
descriptions of each component of the record. Finding aids typically include a variety of
access points, including authority records (names of the individuals who created the archival
documents), geographic headings, and topic headings. Most of the objects in a museum’s
collection are one-of-a-kind and have significant financial, cultural, or historical worth. These
15
objects usually need substantial care and work to preserve and protect them. The general
public is often not intended to use the information-searching technologies present at museums
since they were developed specifically for the benefit of museum employees. The books and
other materials in the library are each given their distinctive description (a book’s catalogue).
The individual object descriptions are not connected unless they are part of a series of related
items. The librarians organise entries in the library catalogue using subject headings.
1.4.5 Access to Collections
It is necessary to physically visit the location to view the archival documents since they are
not made accessible to the public outside of the institution. Researchers may be able to access
a limited selection of content online. There are restrictions on one’s access to specific
information (for example, birth records, adoption records, and personal files). Researchers
must handle the materials with extreme caution. Research is often the primary focus of
archives. Researchers may access archival records, but the consultation must be in the
designated area. The researcher will have to review the organised records manually,
reviewing each item to locate the information they seek. Materials from museums are not
made accessible to the public outside of their institutions; as a result, people can see museum
collections only on museum premises. They may also access a limited selection of items
online. Since they are display materials, people are not authorised to touch the objects in most
cases. Many things shown in display rooms are open to the general public and are a section of
the permanent exhibit. The vast majority of a museum’s collection is locked in a storage
facility, which the general public is not permitted to enter. The curators run the museums.
They only allow access to a few items displayed following a predetermined interpretation or
context done under the directives of the museum’s curatorial and teaching personnel. The
museum offers visitors a structure consisting of context and explanation, which may be
navigated through by visitors. The vast majority of library resources are lendable, or they are
available online. However, certain things, such as special and rare collections, can only be
seen in person. The majority of public libraries adhere to what is known as “open access
policies,” which state that they support allowing members of the general public unfettered
and unrestricted access to material of any kind and in any format. The user generally has
access to a significant quantity of library content, which they are free to browse through and
choose whichever item or items interest them.
1.4.6 Commercial Value
The contents of an archive have no market value, and the generation of this content is not
motivated by any desire to make a profit. Archival collections are not allowed to be sold, and
it is against the law in the majority of nations to divide them up into smaller parts. The
contents of libraries are sometimes made available for purchase by the general public. The
artefacts at the museum are available for purchase.
16
Q1. Differentiate between an archive, a museum and a library.
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1.5 Let’s Sum Up
Archival repositories, museum collections, and library holdings are all heritage institutions.
They are all intended to compile a unified body of information, but due to their unique
working procedures and regulatory standards, they tend to be kept separate from one another.
Despite the many ways in which they vary from one another, every one of these institution
serves an important educational and recreational purpose.
1.6 Further Readings
Banerjee, N.R. 1990. Museum and Cultural Heritage in India. Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan.
Candlin, Fiona, and Jamie Larkin. 2020. “What is a Museum? Difference all the Way Down.”
Museum & Society 18 (2): 115-131.
Chakrabarti, Mahua. 2016. Museums of India. New Delhi: National Book Trust, India.
Kumar, Krishan, V. Jeyaraj, and Ramesh C. Gaur. 2015. “India: Libraries, Archives and
Museums.” In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, edited by John D.
McDonald and Michael Levine-Clark, 1992-2030. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Mairesse, François. 2019. “The Definition of the Museum: History and Issues.” Museum
International 71 (1-2): 152-159.
Sengupta, Syamalendu, and Yasodhara Joshi. 2004. Experiencing History Through Archives:
Restoration of Memory and Repair of Records. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers.
Soares, Bruno Brulon. 2020. “Defining the Museum: Challenges and Compromises of the
21st Century.” ICOFOM Study Series 48 (2): 16-32.
17
Unit 2
1. Contribution of Western Scholars Documentation and

Management of Indian Heritage1
Vikash Kumar Singh
Assistant Professor (History)
Deshbandhu College
University of Delhi
Structure
1.0 Objecitves
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The Years of 1784-1870 (Orientalists)
1.3 Beyond Early Attempts
1.4 Age of John Marshall
1.5 Conclusion
1.6 References
1.0 Objectives
This lesson will equip the reader with:
(i) The trajectory of the growth of knowledge about India's archaeological and cultural
heritage.
(ii) The specific contributions made by different colonial administrators and scholars
towards the creation of that knowledge.
(iii) Help in assessing the value of their contributions keeping in view the biases ingrained
in them.
1.1 Introduction
The study of ancient and medieval Indian classical texts, language and art in the modern
scientific manner, emerged only about two centuries ago. The rediscovery of the ancient and
rich artistic tradition of India began only in the late 18th and 19th centuries, during the period
of British colonial rule in India. It is then that the process of retrieving, conserving and
understanding the nuances of the culture of the colonized people - their scripts, languages,
religions, texts, art and archaeological remains - commenced in earnest. In order to assess the
contributions made by western scholar’s in studying, documenting and management of Indian
1
Vikash Kumar Singh, PhD Research Scholar, University of Delhi.
Sachin Chauhan, PhD Research Scholar, University of Delhi.
18
heritage, one needs to look into individual as well as institutional efforts that were made in
pre- independence India as well as independent India. While one assesses the contribution of
individuals and institutions it also becomes imperative to contextualise their contributions in
order to understand the impact of personal biases, prejudices, political inclinations and
compulsions etc. on the study, documentation and management of Indian heritage.
1.2 The Years of 1784-1870 (Orientalists)
The intellectual environment, which made the study of Indian civilisation possible and gave
birth to archaeology, is associated with the name of Sir William Jones. On January 15, 1784,
under the initiative and guidance of Sir William Jones, the Asiatic Society, for enquiring
into the history, antiquities, arts, sciences and literatures of Asia, was founded in Calcutta.
The establishment of the Society provided a great fillip to Asian studies. In 1788, a journal
called Asiatic Researches was started and, in 1814, a museum was established to house the
objects collected by the workers of the Society. Indian archaeology is most indebted to Sir
William Jones. He established linkages between Chandragupta Maurya and Alexander the
Great providing Indian archaeology with its first positive date. In 1788, Charles Wilkins, a
close associate of Jones, unlocked the mysteries of the Gupta as well as the Kutila scripts and
laid the foundation of epigraphical studies in India.
In 1800, Lord Wellesely deputed Francis Buchanan to survey Mysore. In 1807,
Buchanan was again deputed to survey the topography, history and antiquities of Bengal. For
the next eight years, Buchanan surveyed the districts of Dinajpur, Rangpur, Purnea,
Bhagalpur, Patna, Bihar, Shahabad and Gorakhpur. Though his report was never published,
what little of it was made available in 1838 by Montogomerie Martin gives an idea of the
keenness and accuracy of his observations.
It was the remarkable James Prinsep, who was the presiding genius of the early period.
His deciphering of the Brahmi script was his most important contribution and this paved the
way for further progress in understanding India’s heritage. It was his genius and labour that
helped archaeology to free itself from antiquarian and literary affiliations, James Prinsep,
assumed the direction of virtually the entire field of archaeological work in India. Prinsep
was essentially a man of science and he brought precision to his task and the scientist’s
mastery of factual details, which enabled him to march from discovery to discovery.
Initiatives taken by Prinsep were not only in making new finds, but in subjecting existing
discoveries to an interpretative analysis, such as the exploration of the stupas in Afghanistan,
particularly the historical site of Begram, which brought to light for the first time the names
of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Scythian dynasties, of whom no previous historical records
existed at all. The required conservation of a stone pillar in the Allahabad fort, which had
ancient inscriptions, attracted his attention and the work of preserving it was undertaken.
It was under Prinsep that the task of translating original material from the authentic
records of ancient Hindu dynasties of the Southern Peninsula was completed and they were
published. The pattern of research, which Prinsep created may be found in his Indian
19
Antiquities (London, 1858), a posthumous edition of his historic, palaeographic and
numismatic essays. In both, the collection and reading of inscriptions and coins, Prinsep’s
mantle fell upon Cunningham’s shoulders, but many others were also inspired. Thus
Lieutenant Bret made a thorough record of the West Indian cave inscriptions, and it was the
interest aroused by the publication of his Historical Researches (Bombay, 1847) and
Fergusson’s early work on the coins, which led to the formation of the Bombay Cave
Commission in 1848 to investigate the history of the caves and undertake their preservation.
He found the caves of Udaygiri and Khadagiri near Bhubaneshwar in Orissa occupied by
bairagis or wandering mendicants, but once observed that a few picnic parties from Cuttack
or Puri and pilfering by a few would-be antiquarians did more damage to these caves than
these bairagis.
In North-West India and Afghanistan, Charles Masson, whose real name was James
Lewis (1800-1853), but who travelled throughout present-day India, Pakistan and
Afghanistan under the assumed name Charles Masson after deserting his post with the British
East India Company in 1827, recorded many sites in these areas, visiting the great mound of
Harappa for the first time in 1826. The fruits of his work are contained in his notes to the
Bengal Asiatic Society and in Asiana Antiqua (London, 1841) where he contributed a
description of the sites (mainly stupas) he had excavated, while H.W. Wilson wrote a study of
his coin finds and ancient geography. Masson’s discoveries at Begram drew the attention of
scholars to the astonishing Indo-Greek coinage and “opened a new page in the history of
Greek art. Many others deserve mention: Alexander Burnes, Jean-Baptiste Ventura,
Court, and Gerard Lake all collected coins and recorded sites in North-West India and
Afghanistan. Captain Cautley discovered the remains of a large settlement of Behat near
Saharanpur. His excavations are among the earliest in India to be applied to a non-
monumental site.
Art and architectural remains received some attention as part of the regional surveys
undertaken to understand the geography, history, customs, languages, literature, and folklore
of a people. Important work emerged from individual initiatives such as those of Colin
Mackenzie (1754–1821). Working with a team of draftsmen and learned Indians or Pundits,
Mackenzie acquired translations of inscriptions and manuscripts and had detailed maps and
drawings of some southern Indian sites prepared. His efforts at documenting the Amaravati
stupa and site are of particular art historical significance. Several traditional Indian scholars
played an important part in the colonial project of recovering India’s past but were usually
assigned subordinate roles. The study of written sources to interpret varied aspects of cultural
history, however, remained more or less detached from the object- or monument-centric
approach to Indian art and architectural history.
20
Q.1. Name two noted Orientalists.
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Q.2. When was the Asiatic Society founded and with what objective?
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Q.3. Mention the pioneering work done by the Orientalists in the study of coins.
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Q.4. Assess the role played by the interpreters in discovering India's cultural heritage.
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1.3 Beyond Early Attempts
In the late eighteenth and through a major part of the nineteenth century, the study of Indian
heritage grew out of a keen and unrelenting interest in Indian antiquities – as curiosities, as
admirable ‘handicrafts,’ as mysterious ‘monstrosities,’ and above all, as ‘artefacts’ or sources
of past histories of a country then colonized by the British. These objectives set the tone for
and determined the methods adopted in the study of Indian archaeology and art history during
the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. Despite the marked colonial bias,
this period is crucial to the formal inception and institutionalization of art history in India. Art
and the Interpretation of India’s Past Survey, Documentation, Archiving and the potential of
the visual artefact in comprehending India’s past was well-appreciated by the British
antiquarians of the nineteenth century, even as steps were being taken during the period to
understand Indian history and culture through written records.
Among those who pioneered a methodological study of Indian architecture, James
Fergusson (1808–1886) is well-known for his systematic study of Indian architectural
history and Alexander Cunningham (1814–1893) is remembered for laying the foundations
of Indian archaeology. Both believed in the superiority of Western aesthetics, techniques, and
21
canons, and categorized the material remains of India’s past within colonial constructs. The
shared genesis of the modern disciplines of archaeology and art history in nineteenth century
India and the circumstances and motivations that determined the early framework of Indian
art history are discussed by Upinder Singh and Gautam Sengupta.
Of Cunningham’s numerous publications mention must be made of the first volume of
the corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum containing inscriptions of Asoka, ancient geography of
India, etc. The significant discovery that Cunningham made in 1872-75 was the proto-historic
site of Harappa. The extensive ruins at Harappa had attracted his attention in the year 1853
and again in 1856, but he made the first excavations only seven years later. He did not
recognise the importance of relics found by him till Sir John Marshall showed these to be
those of a great proto-historic civilization. In her contribution, “Archaeologists and
Architectural Scholars in Nineteenth Century India,” Singh draws attention to little-known
aspects of Cunningham’s important contributions to Indian art and architectural history. In
doing so, she also focuses on the place accorded to art historical issues in the activities of the
Archaeological Survey of India during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Cunningham
is better known for his emphasis on excavations, field and archival documentation systems,
and for prioritizing inscriptional and numismatic data A History of Art History: The Indian
Context over the evidence of art and architecture. Yet, for Cunningham the scope of
archaeology was very broad, and included many different aspects that could help to
illuminate the study of the past. He documented and wrote about a large corpus of
monuments in his capacity as Archaeological Surveyor (1861-1865) and as the first Director
General of the Archaeological Survey of India (1871–1885). Singh’s intensely researched
work reveals insightful details about subtle shifts in Cunningham’s contextual understandings
of early Buddhist sculpture and architecture. These can be detected in his observations on the
art remains at Bhilsa Topes, Bharhut, and Bodhgaya – all Buddhist sites on the trail of the
Chinese traveller, Xuan Zang, whose writings held a special fascination for him. The gradual
emergence of disciplinary boundaries between archaeology and architectural history in an
atmosphere of conflicting interests, ideologies, political motivations and priorities, and the
academic debates that were symptomatic of the larger preoccupations of the period are
revisited and candidly analysed by Singh.
Distinct in approach from Cunningham, James Fergusson, with a clear focus on
architectural history, attempted to understand Indian architecture in a global context and
through the comparative method.11 This is apparent in his History of Architecture in All
Countries (1867) and Historical Enquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, especially
with reference to Architecture (1849). His passion for arriving at general principles,
processes, criteria, and canons of architecture through extensive surveys and illustrated
records has rarely been matched. He documented and attempted to ‘read’ the monument to its
last detail, treating it as a ‘fixed’ and hence the most reliable source of cultural interpretation.
His focus was on the artistic and technical processes of its making, and on the period and
region styles. He did not consult texts and inscriptions, yet he evinced interest in Indian
mythology and religion, as is evident in his Tree and Serpent Worship... (1868).
22
Although culture-specific and textured readings of Indian architecture were alien to him,
his observations convinced him of the integrity and rationale of ancient and medieval Indian
architectural forms and ornament. According to him, Egyptian, Classical Greek, and Indian
architecture represented ‘true’ styles as opposed to the ‘imitative’ styles seen during the
revival of the Classical and the Gothic in Europe. Fergusson’s macro surveys and
comparative approach were full of insights. Lithographs, drawings, and finally photographs
greatly aided in generating more precise documentation – far beyond what the ‘picturesque’
aquatints and sketches of William Hodges and the Daniells of the preceding century had
achieved.
But beyond his empathy for Indian architecture, Fergusson was an avowed believer of
the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon vis-a-vis the Asian. He adopted racial (Aryan – non-
Aryan) and religious (Buddhist–Hindu–Jain– Muhammadan) classifications for art periods
and styles, which have had a persistent presence in Indian art historical discourse. He was
also convinced of the progressive degeneration of Indian art, the best being represented by
ancient (Buddhist) art. The yardstick for judgement was always ‘Western’ and the cultural
context of the monument was in many ways lost to him.
Fergusson’s approach was continued by his successors, James Burgess, Henry
Cousens, Alexander Rea, A.H. Longhurst, and Percy Brown, to name some of the notable
architectural historians. It may be recalled here that in categorizing Indian art and
architecture, Cunningham had adopted a time-based classification, terming the periods as
‘Indo Grecian,’ ‘Indo-Scythian,’ and ‘Indo-Sassanian’ that none-the-less reflected his
prejudice about the derivative nature of Indian art.
As mentioned earlier, the most glaring omission in much of the Orientalist writings was
the neglect of Indian texts and contexts in interpreting Indian art and architecture. This had
resulted in some odd and obviously incorrect speculations about the origins and derivations
of Indian architectural forms, such as the ‘origin’ of the Indian temple from the Buddhist
stupa.
Upinder Singh and Gautam Sengupta have touched upon several larger issues pertinent
to the formative years of Indian art history – the intimately allied nature of the disciplines of
history, archaeology, and art history; the political compulsions of academic research in the
colonial period; issues concerning the ‘region’ versus the ‘nation;’ the conflict between
ideology and training of the early ‘native’ scholar; Western assumptions of the derivative
nature and gradual decay of Indian art; and the differing academic priorities and ideological
tensions between Alexander Cunningham, James Fergusson, Jas Burgess, J.D.M. Beglar, and
others.
At a less obvious level, tensions arising from the politics of disciplinary priorities and
personal ambitions prevailed amongst the Orientalists too, as is demonstrated in U. Singh’s
paper through a careful reading of Beglar’s personal remarks on a copy of Fergusson’s book
of 1884. In a larger context, it reveals the academic politics that shaped the relative
23
institutional importance accorded to archaeology vis-a-vis art and architectural history. Even
though Fergusson, Burgess, and other contemporary architectural historians had paid
attention to ‘form’ and ‘style’ in Indian architecture, Indian sculpture and painting did not
gain favour as ‘fine art’ until the early decades of the twentieth century and were considered
useful mainly as visual records of the (‘debased’) customs, manners, religious beliefs, and
other aspects of India’s past. Indian sculpture was viewed through the lens of a classical
Western standard epitomized by the Greek arts of antiquity. The lack of ‘realism’ or
‘naturalism,’ the absence of a sense of perspective and proportion, the many heads and
multiple arms of divinities, animal-headed gods, explicitly sexual scenes on temple walls, and
such other representations evoked several derogatory responses to Indian art. While figural
sculpture was severely criticized, abstract patterns and architectural ornament were rated
highly as representing the finest traditions in handicrafts, meant to be carefully documented
and emulated in British industrial design and manufacture.
Q.1. Describe the growth of institutions for the study of India's past.
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Q.2. Name the scholars who first discovered the Harappan sites.
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Q.3. Who was the author of Tree and Serpent worship? What is the significance of this
work?
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Q.4. What are the shortcomings of the Orientalist writings on Indian art and architecture?
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Q.5. Discuss the contribution of Perey Brown to the study of art history.
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1.4 Age of John Marshall
The period after Cunningham’s departure till the arrival of Lord Curzon did not see much
fanfare as part of the process of documenting, managing and conserving Indian heritage was
concerned. However, Sourindranath Roy saw the arrival of Curzon as heralding “the dawn of
a new era” for Indian archaeology as he foresaw an increased government responsibility.
Some of the initiatives that were introduced included: bringing the princely states under
the purview of regional surveyors, the passing of Ancient monuments preservation act 1904.
Besides Marshall played a crucial role in the institution of two scholarships – one for Sanskrit
and other for Persian and Arabic for training Indian scholars in Indian archaeology.
In his pioneering work D.K Chakrabarti has talked about how the various excavations
and explorations that were taken up in this period were scattered across regions and cultures.
While excavation, restoration of Buddhist sites continued the discovery of Indus Valley Sites
saw the shifting of primary focus on these new unexplored sites.
Archaeological surveys under the leadership of Sir John Marshall established the
antiquity of India’s civilisation by pushing back the then existing earlier dates by another
3,000 years. Marshall’s surveys included Buddhist sites, monuments of the Indo-Greeks and
the cities of the Indus civilisation. It is said, he left India 3,000 years older than he found her.
The outcome of his survey projects brought out a large set of cultural dimensions. During
Marshall’s time many of the locations of cultural importance had been exposed through the
contributions of his predecessors, especially Sir Alexander Cunningham, the founding father
of Indian archaeology. Marshall's noteworthy contributions are the detailed reporting of his
fieldwork, which included both explorations and excavations. For instance, Mohenjodaro and
the Indus civilisation (three volumes), monuments of Sanchi (two volumes) and Taxila (three
volumes) are still considered works that reveal the potential of archaeological operations in
reconstructing the past. Marshall's findings and studies exposed a more ancient urban
civilisation about which there was no historical awareness till then. Thus it was he who
founded the scientific study of archaeologically supported historiography in India.
Besides the aforesaid activities, he laid the foundation stone for Taxila Museum in 1918
and also introduced the programme of cataloguing and conserving ancient monuments and
artefacts. Even a casual look at the Marshall collections of photographs of monuments and
ancient settlements, currently available in the Oriental Museum, Durham, can act as a very
important tool to appreciate the setting of monuments in their natural environment and the
significant relationship between the monument and its neighbouring ecology, which is
disappearing because of the recent rapid urbanisation.
It was not just the Director General Sir john Marshall but the work done by his peers
many of whom he himself recruited that a gave a distinct colour and strength to this period.
Men like J F Fleet, Henry Cousens, D R Bhandarkar, Alexander Rea, H Hargreaves,
Theodore Bloch, M A Stein, Daya Ram Sahni, Rakhal Das Banerjee, M S Vats, N G
25
Mazumdar who were masters in Indian studies provided strength and solidity to the period
between 1902 and 1944.
The establishment of National Archives in the late 19th century and its subsequent
expansion during the 20th century too played a huge role in the documenting and management
of Indian heritage. Though established in 1889, the National Archives under the supervision
of Prof. G W Forrest took to examining, transferring, arranging and cataloguing records of
all the Departments and to organise a Central Library in place of various Departmental
Libraries. After G.W. Forrest, the work at Imperial Records Department (IRD) progressed
well under S.C. Hill (1900), C.R. Wilson (1902), N.L. Hallward (1904), E. Denison Ross
(1905), A.F. Scholfield (1915), R.A. Blaker (1919), J.M. Mitra (1920) and Rai Bahadur
A.F.M. Abdul Ali (1922-1938) who were scholars as well as Records Keepers in their own
right.
Dr. S.N. Sen, who succeeded A.F.M. Abdul Ali and held office till 1949, gave an overall
orientation to the activities of Imperial/ Records Department/ National Archives of India. For
the first time, records were thrown open for bonafide research in 1939 and by 1947 all pre
1902 records were available for consultation. A Conservation Research Laboratory (CRL)
was established in 1940 to conduct research into problems relating to conservation which was
Dr Sen’s visionary contribution. Training in Archives Keeping was introduced in 1941 and in
1944, a scheme of Post War Re-organisation of Archives offices in India was laid down by
the Indian Historical Records Commission. In 1947, the Departmental Journal, The Indian
Archives came into existence; which contained research papers on source material of modern
Indian history, conservation of documents, records-management, reprographics, archival
awareness and all other allied aspects of functional archives.
Q.1. Evaluate the contribution of Lord Curzon to the branch of archaeology.
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Q.2. Mention the archaeological discoveries made by James Fergusson.
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Q.3. Who wrote Inscriptionum Indicarum? What is its importance?
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Q.4. When was the National Archives founded?
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Q.5. Assess the importance of national Archives for the researchers.
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1.5 Conclusion
The study, documentation and management of Indian heritage was not the prerogative of a
selected few but required the efforts and contributions of a range of personalities and
Institutions. The entire exercise was thus dependent on personal biases, prejudices, political
ideologies and cultural underpinnings of individuals as well as institutional apparatuses. An
analysis of the study, documentation and management of Indian heritage is thereby a
complicated and multi-layered task which ought to be undertaken with utmost attention. The
factors influencing this process thus have to be carefully quantified and contextually situated
so that one is able to understand the role and significance of time and space in the study,
documentation and management of Indian heritage.
1.6 References
Chakrabarti, D.K., (1988), History of Indian Archaeology: The Beginning to 1947,
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers: New Delhi.
Chandra, Pramod, (1983), On the Study of Indian Art, Harvard University Press:
Massachusetts.
Chandra, Pramod, (ed.), (1975), Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, American Institute of
Indian Studies: New Delhi.
Dhar, Parul Pandya, (2011), Indian Art: Changing Perspectives, D.K. Print World Ltd: New
Delhi.
Ghosh, A., (1960), Indian Archaeology, Dept. of Archaeology/GOI: New Delhi.
Mitter, Partha, (1977), Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian
Art, Oxford University Press:UK.
Prakash, Ravi, (2013), ‘The Journey of Indian Archaeology: From Antiquarianism to
Archaeology under British Rule’ South Asian Journal of Tourism and Heritage (SAJTH),
January, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 136-144.
Singh, Upinder, (2009), ‘Alexander Cunningham’s contribution to Indian Archaeology’ in
Archaeology in India: Individuals, Ideas and Institutions, edited by Gautam Sengupta and
Kaushik Gangopadhyay, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers: New Delhi.
27
2. History and Development of Archives and Museums in India
Rohan
Assistant Professor
Maitreyi College
Delhi University
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Archives
1.3 The National Archives of India
1.4 Museums
1.5 Imperial Museum (Calcutta) and the National Museum of India (New Delhi)
1.6 Bibliography
1.0 Objectives
After reading this lesson one will know:
1. The evolution of the meaning of the term 'Archives'.
2. The principles on which the archival records are collected.
3. The purposes of record keeping by the British.
4. How imperial biases affected record keeping.
5. The growth of Archives through colonial and post-colonial times.
6. The evolution of Museums in colonial and modern times.
1.1 Introduction
Remnants of the past help us reconstruct history of the land and in turn it creates the legacy
on which the nation’s heritage is built. The keeping of the records, therefore, becomes an
important edifice of nation building. It would not be an exaggeration to argue that both
archives and museums – the places where the records are maintained in textual and relic
forms respectively – help structure a narrative of ‘collective’ history of a community. There
is a popular belief that an archive and a museum are pivotal for historians to write the history
of the land, however it is equally important for sociologists, ethnologists, anthropologists and
allied disciplines of social sciences. In this chapter we would see how these archives and
museums were conceived? Whether they underwent any significant change, particularly in
context of India? And, how did they play a role in reconstruction of the past?
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1.2 Archives
The origin of the word can be traced back to the Greek word archeion meaning which
belongs to the office. The root word here is arche which has a number of derivatives and a
number of meanings making the horizon of an archive way bigger than one could imagine.
Arche means: 1) the first cause: the beginning, the origin; 2) first place: power, sovereignty,
realm, kingdom, empire; and 3) magistracy office. From the first definition is derived the
Greek word archaios which means ancient and old; and from here we get the words like
archaic and archaeology. The second of derivatives gave the Greek word architekton which
means chief builder; and from here we get architecture and archbishop. The third set of
derivatives we get archeion that gave us the word archives. In due course of time the term
evolved and reached Romans who called it archivium in Latin from where comes the French
word l’archive (sing.) and later les archives (pl.). The collective sense of the word was
adopted into English and thus was derived the word archives. Once it became part of the
English lexicon a lot many derivatives were born out of it. For instance, Sir Henry Jenkinson
who was the Deputy Records Keeper of England from 1947-1952 used it in singular form to
denote a single document. Dr. Roscoe Hill who was the Chief of the Division of
Classifications of the US Official Archives in Washington from 1941-1946 suggested a lot of
derivative terms from archives, such as – archive = depository; archives = the records in an
archive; archivalize = to consign a record to an archive; archivology = the science of
administration of the archive.
To qualify as an archive, it needs to have three things: the records, the physical structure
or building to house those records, and an administrative machinery that is involved in
maintaining and servicing them. The National Archives of India is British styled red and
brown stone building, the records housed inside and the office of the Director of Archives of
Government of India put together. By this definition even the furniture and tools kept in the
archives become records. In modern times, thus, the definition is restricted keeping the
archivist rather than the archive at the centre of the definition. For an archivist an archive is
an organised body of records created or received by a government agency, institution,
organisation, family or individual and preserved by that agency or its legitimate successors as
evidence of its organisation, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations or other
activities or because of the information data contained therein. This definition is quite
narrower than what it meant half a century ago. For us, an archive is anything that is part of
the past. An old manuscript, a copper plate, diary, letters, inscriptions of important persons
without concerning the matter of the record. But again, we know that archives don’t include
everything. So, if the archives are all records why certain records don’t make it to the
archives? That brings us to another pertinent question – are all records archives?
What qualifies as ‘record’? Etymologically speaking, ‘record’ is derived from the Latin
word recordari that means ‘being mindful of’. The root word is cor which means ‘heart’ in
Latin. The Romans believed that the real place of memory is our heart and thence the phrase,
‘to learn by heart’. A record thus becomes something that is committed to writing in order to
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preserve the memory of fact or event of the past. That increases the dimension of what can
qualify as record, from – books, manuscripts, cartographs, diaries, photographs, recordings,
microfilms or any other document.
The first such person to give some clarity on this was the celebrated Italian archivist, one
of the pioneers of systematizing the science of archive administration and the father of Italian
archival, Eugenio Casanova (1867-1951). While serving as the Director of the State Archive
of Rome he made two distinctions between archival records – current records (archivio
corrente) and non-current or the second records (archivio di deposito). The former was easy
to define but there were troubles defining the second because it was arbitrary and differed
from one archivist to the other.
The second attempt in this regard was made by Philip Coolidge Brooks (1906-1977), an
archivist at the National Archives and Records Services and later the Director of the Harry
Truman Library. He came up with his famous concept, “The Life History of Records”. It was
conceived as a diagram wherein at one farthest end is kept all elements that create records
and on the other end is the archives. Between these two points would be the systematic
treatment divided in stages through which a record will pass and finally end up in the
archives.
First Stage (Currency Stage): To see whether it is of use in day today administration for
the purpose for which it was originally created.
Second Stage (Semi-Currency Stage): Of their being ‘recorded’ either with or without an
indication of how long should they be kept, their re-examination after a stipulated period and
weeding out of the valueless material. If the agency does not weed it out and so it retains its
purpose. However, they are semi-current files and is not that active both in terms of usage in
ancillary service and otherwise.
Final Stage (Archival Stage): The semi-current files become practically non-active. They
are no more of ephemeral interest for the administration and now they are ready to be finally
transferred to central archives for ‘indefinite retention’.
The first attribute of an archive, is therefore, the relationship it has with a creating
agency. The archives of a particular agency reflect the policy, function, organisation and
transactions of that agency alone; and from this fact is derived the first major principle – the
archive of a given creator in no circumstance be intermingled with those of another creator.
The second attribute of the archive is its official character, meaning thereby, that the product
or by-product of the transaction have legal effects; giving the second principle - the archive
must remain under the custody of a curator and his legal successor to ensure that no
tampering has been done with them from outside and they are acceptable as a valid piece of
evidence of transaction in the court of law. The third attribute is the uniqueness of the archive
therefore qua record may not be repeated anywhere else. The transaction between the agency
and the archive is a never-ending process and with it the records grow naturally. Each new
file is connected to the preceding piece of record and the former is explained only with the
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help of the latter. The sequence therefore is pivotal to record keeping because if the sequence
is lost the story is lost or worse the story gets wholly inaccurate. Thence, the original order of
records in no circumstance be disturbed, changed or tinkered with. The sanctity of the
original order is the fourth attribute of an archive.
These four principles distinguish an archive from a museum where in the latter the
collections are isolated events and they are arranged in some sort of logical order and the
arrangement is determined as they grow and not afterwards. The museum doesn’t have the
official character or relationship with the creating agency nor are they unique. They may be
rare but not necessarily the only one until something new is unearthed.
Bernard Cohn in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India
maintained that beyond military and economic transformations the British embarked upon the
cultural transformation of India and that was possible through the masterly display of the
relics from the past that included both textual as well material culture of the sub-continent.
Knowledge, after all, as Foucault puts it irrevocably linked to power. Not all the records of
the Indian past were important for the imperialists. As discussed above it is the agency that
decides the nature of the archive, and here the agency was the imperial power under the
empress of Great Britain. The Dharmaśāstras were not a constituent for the imperial archive
that was set up in Calcutta as Imperial Records Department (IRD) in 1891. The religious texts
of India that the imperialist labelled ‘mythical’ ‘poetic’ and ‘philosophical’ didn’t
complement the British imperial vision of colonial empire and hence they didn’t attest as
records. In other words, the history and the beginning of archives in India has a colonial
legacy which didn’t represent the culture, heritage, story and life of the native Indians. To
understand what qualified as records under the imperial agency one has to understand the
objective behind creating IRD.
Q.1. Describe the etymological evolution of the term Archives.
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Q.2. What qualifies as an archival record?
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Q.3. Describe the stages through which a record is considered worthy of archiving.
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Q.4. What is the difference between Archives and Museum?
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Q.5. Examine the principles on which the Dharmasastras were not considered an archival
material.
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1.3 The National Archives of India
With the shift of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, IRD too shifted to its new home
and was re-christened The National Archives of India (NAI) on 20th August 1947. A section
of historians believes that the purpose of creation of such department of records was to ease
out administration of the natives. However, scholars like Partha Chaterjee and Sabyasachi
Bhattacharya argue that creation of archives was based on a larger colonial discourse of
orientalism and question of race since the commissioning of state sponsored archival projects
date back before the establishment of IRD in 1891. These projects had the ontological power
in providing the assumption about how India would be portrayed in the world. The first
investigative project began in Bengal in the 1770s. They called it ‘enquiries’. It had a set of
question that they sought answers to – Who collects the revenue? How is it assessed? The
objective was to find the nature of the ownership rights over land and wealth in India. These
enquiries helped them to understand that the king is not the owner of the land rather the
ownerships over a piece of land could be with many and among them zamindars are the most
powerful. That explains why the British pushed for diwani rights in Bengal rather than
becoming nawabs themselves after the defeat of the Nawab in the battle of Plassey in 1757.
In other words, the land settlement process of the British began the process of collecting
“customs and local histories” only related to the information pertaining to land tenure. The
findings of the enquiries constituted settlement reports that were produced district to district
basis that in turn culminated into the creation of the agency of the British Census office that
would provide important records to the IRD/NAI in the later run. The second set of records
came from what we may call as ‘civilising mission’ projects. Several imperialist scholars like
Alexander Dow, Robert Orme, Charles Grant, Mark Wilks, James Mill and James Tod began
to write about the people and the peopling cultures and tradition of the country. What was
before now part of the memory of natives were being codified in the form of written records.
Neeladri Bhattacharya in The Great Agrarian Conquest argued that how the memory that
preceded history were codified that gave rise to three segregated yet interconnected agencies
of modern India – thana, survey (with maps and revenue records) and legal system. He
further argues that the information collected through these projects helped transform ‘rural
India’ into ‘village India’. In other words, the creation of villagescape as the smallest unit of
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India was created so as to bring uniformity and ease to administrative control, revenue
collection and maintaining time to time records of the populace of the colony. All these were
to become the records of the archives later. The third set of records came through travel
reports and surveys. The first survey of importance was by James Renell in 1765. From there
on many successive surveys were undertaken from surveying the flora and fauna to draw
imaginary lines on the land to find the highest peaks of the Himalayas. This also gave the first
set of surveyors in India – James Renell, William Lambton, Colin Mackenzie, Alexander
Cunningham and Francis Buchanan Hamilton. The findings during these surveys that were
penned made their way to the archives later, however the relics called the ‘antiquaries’ paved
the way for – The Archaeological Survey of India and the Museums. The last set of bulk of
records came from surveillance. For instance, a Thagi and Dacoity Department was created in
1835. The first task, therefore, in front of them was to gather information on the practices of
those communities who killed for rituals, particularly the travellers. The records that came
down to us from such department to archive constructed the ethnographic profiling of India
on which the notion of criminal tribes and castes were based even after the independence of
India in 1947. The other institution was the policing system and later the introduction of
fingerprinting by William Herschel and Francis Galton. The plethora of information that were
collected with the primary objective of easing out administration marked the first stage of the
archives in India. Therefore, even though IRD was established in 1891 it had records from
1748.
The first phase, thus, from 1748 to 1891 was marked by an administrative logic but it
must be seen in connection with the rising wave of nationalism is Europe since 1848 that
made the use of archives furthermore pivotal for not only administrative interests but to give
the populace a sense of belongingness to their collective history. One can understand the
importance of archives while drawing an analogy from India - the archival destruction had
the same bearing as the temple destruction had in medieval centuries. Archives were a
symbol of nationalist fervour that had taken shape in Europe since the eighteenth century. In
the post-war treaties, one would find ‘archival clauses’ wherein clear terms and conditions
were laid for the transfer of records and archival debts after the war was over. The archive
was equated with the state and thus during wars taking over the archives was portrayed as
purifying or freeing or cleansing the archives from the servitude to the state. By the
nineteenth century, ‘archival clauses’ were in every post-war treatises because for the others
who saw archives as institution of servitude to the State, for the State it symbolised the
edifice of their past to be preserved for life in the name of nationalism. This marked the
beginning of the second phase in the history of archives in India as well.
Archives too were undergoing significant change. Until the nineteenth century, the
medieval records and royal charters alone qualified to be considered as ‘historical records’.
However, with the rise of nationalism, the definition of historical record for a state change
significantly. It paved the way for historians who were conscious of the necessities of the
records for constructing a history that cannot be challenged. For them records were the only
facts and facts generated truth and the abode of the truth was the archives. These set of
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historians were called the ‘Positivists’ who made archives holier than thou because it was
source of writing the ‘absolute’ history of the state. This consciousness came down to India
as well and thus the second marked the emergence of an archival consciousness, thanks to the
Positivists, that gave the house of administrative records an intellectual value and in turn
made the edifice that must be protected at all cost. However, India was a colony back then
and so the imperialists were aware of the role of the archives was not only in redefining the
past but also to define the future. In the second phase, therefore, K. M. Panikkar maintained
that the colonial cultural projects transformed by tinkering and denigrating the existing
epistemic structures of the Indian society. In other words, IRD began working as a tool to
hegemonize the colonial intellectual structures.
The colonial articulation of power was spatially articulated in the confines of the
archives where its own subjects were denied intellectual rights. The agencies who decided on
the records were silent about the Indian side of the records. In other words, an Indian could
find about India only from whatever the official records of the British had to tell. The
assertion made by Foucault in that the facts are culturally constructed which is decided upon
the state to ensure that power remains with it is true in this context.
The founding of the NAI, therefore, depicts the process of facilitation of the construction
of knowledge of colonization done through archives. It also presents a history of silence
where several indigenous structures were questioned, curtailed and demolished in order to
present a linear history of India. Positivists who saw archives as repositories of facts
produced the history of the elites, colonists and the state in isolation and later popularised it
as the history of the masses. The other major issue was the grammar of the archives. An
archives keeps textual records and so a vast sections of sources were denied the status of
records. For instance, most of the religious and philosophical texts were rejected because it
came down from one generation to the next orally and that their translation would be far from
being sanctimonious like the records maintained by the modern agencies. Sana Aziz gives an
example one such attempt that reveals the motives of the colonialist furthermore. She
mentions about the translation of Hedaya (12th century text of Hanafi School) into English for
the native Muslims by the order of Warren Hastings. By choosing a particular text, she
argues, that the imperialists were codifying the belief as much as they were bringing fixity to
the way of life of the natives. Selection and translation of the text ensured two things – fixity
to the text for the natives and agglomeration and preservation of records that were convenient
for them to maintain. An attempt to validate a history of the natives using their texts
selectively while calling the rest of the sources ‘mythical’ and ‘poetic’ led to the development
of what we may call ‘State Attested’ sources for writing the history of the natives.
The third significant step towards the development of NAI was the regulation of the
archival records. Since, most of the curators were not trained archivists the functioning of the
archives was based on rules that were retained by the Governors one after the other. Any
significant change in the attitude of the successor governor was also reflected in the longevity
of the importance of certain documents for record keeping in the archives. Also, the Indian
34
scholars who knew the vernacular languages were not given the role of prominence in the
matters of collecting, corroborating and deciding what could be made into a record for the
archives. Rama Mantena gives an important example in this regard: Colin Mackenzie who is
famously known for his Mackenzie Collection in the NAI for the extensive collection of
inscriptions and epigraphical records from South India died in 1821. While alive, his one of
the closest associates and a great linguist Kevali Venkata Lakshmaiah helped him find and
translate most of the collected works. After his death he could have been the best person to
have succeeded him to carry the work forward, however he was succeeded by H. H. Wilson
and William Taylor who had little familiarity with the South Indian languages. Their biases
were so strong towards Mackenzie’s work that they declared the collection “non-historical.”
On the contrary, these two successors used the Mackenzie’s Collection to prove the natives
are so uncivilised that they are incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood.
Perhaps, that is how such collections were shelved almost at the end of the building premise
which even today is followed verbatim without realising the what we follow is an impression
of the colonial design of segregating Indian history into history, non-history and myth.
Similar issues were faced while addressing the idea of sexuality and gender relations in
ancient India. Ruby Lal argues that for the British it was a sign of oriental backwardness and
thence the absence of documents that explored the issues of gender, body and masculinity
from the pre-British times. It was therefore the attitude of the archivists and record keepers
that also justified what would qualify as ‘authentic’ facts of the land.
How does one deal with this absentia? Ruby Lal suggests that one can create their own
archive. That brings us to an important notional understanding that an agency can also be an
individual and the archive thus can also be ‘Private’. In colonial India, the rajas and nawabs
maintained their own state archives. For instance, we have Patiala State Archives maintained
by the Maharaja of Patiala and the Raja of Travancore also created a State Archive of his
state pre-independence. Once freedom movement gained ground individuals also began to
create their own archival collections depending on the ideology that they followed. One could
see a lot of sections within an archive, for instance P. C. Joshi collection in Modern India
Archive, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Tagore Collection at Viswa Bharati, Shanti
Niketan. One can also make an archive on their own today. Ruby Lal extends her suggestion
by taking an example of collecting marriage invitations or marriage advertisements to trace
the genealogy of the customs of arranged marriages in different states of India. Ruby Lal
describing the inherent bias in the NAI takes example of Dyce Sombre, the first ever Anglo-
Indian Prince and Asian to join the British Parliament in the nineteenth century. In all the
documents of the archives he is declared a ‘lunatic’ and thus he had to undergo a prolonged
legal battle to claim his property of Sardhana (near Delhi) that would have come down to him
from her foster mother, the famous Begum Samru (called Begum Sombre in archival
records). The records of the archives are replete with he being a ‘lunatic’ and the legal battle
that followed for the claim over the property, however the records mention nothing about him
as a parliamentarian, issues concerning race and even his existence as the legal inheritor of
the property of Begum Samru. According to Edward Said since the colonists thought they
35
already enough about the natives as they saw them preserving their practices would burden
the bureaucratic with unnecessary excesses. Therefore, one finds an absence of indigenous
knowledge from the colonial archives. One such reference can be made to the absence of
Madrasa Rahimia, the focal point of Islamic intellectualism of eighteenth-century Delhi in the
archives. We find their references in details in the contemporary Persian and Urdu literatures
and yet they find no official mention in British records. Another example of absentia and the
erasure of a significant attribute of pre-modern Bengal was the infamous Inam Commission
of 1828. Almost, the same time when Persian was replaced by English as the official
language of correspondence by Lord Bentinck. The commission was set up to resume the
ma’afi land grants that were given to the educational institution to maintain the native
scholastic traditions. Sana Aziz argues that it practically destroyed the native education set up
as the said grant was not recognised by the British bureaucracy. Consequently, Hunter in his
famous Hunter Commission recorded that “between 1828 to 1846 a panic was created among
the Mohemadans that left a bitter legacy of hatred,” and subsequently a cause of the growing
discontent whose zenith was reached during the Revolt of 1857. The knowledge of the
destruction of the Mohemadan education system would have been lost had the history of the
native education system be written on the basis of colonial archives alone.
The third phase began to take shape post-1857. Although there was no direct inclusion of
native material in the archival records, however while describing the state of affairs to the
Secretary of State a lot correspondences mentioned about the issues discreetly. Such
correspondences that were once rare had become a norm once the power shifted hands from
the Company to the Crown. These correspondences were preserved in the Oriental and India
Office Collection in British Library. The collection constituted of Board of Commissioners
for the Affairs of India (1784-1857) and India Office Records (1858-1947). Post-
independence several archival exchanges between NAI and the India Office brought the
copies of these correspondences in the micro-film. The digital archiving, thus, marked the
third phase of evolution and development of the archives in India.
The fourth stage began with declaring the archives as the part of the Central List of the
Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution. With this began the linking of the several state
archives which were once mostly the private collections of the princely states. This process
was completed with the establishment of several regional archival offices in Bhopal (1956),
three record centres in Jaipur (1977), Pondicherry (1979) and Bhubaneshwar (1996).
Authority-ship over all the premier state archives was established in this phase. The
importance given to NAI as an edifice of national treasure can be surmised by the fact that it
finds mention from the first Five Year planning onwards. From almost no financial outlay to
a corpus of Rupees 802.69 crores in the VIII- Five Year Plan was given to the NAI. From the
First to the Seventh Plans concentrated on building our cultural institutions and establish
cultural relations with the neighbouring nations. The exchange of records from the India
Office, Britain was part of the same extension programme. From the Fourth Plan onwards
awareness of our heritage was made an intrinsic part of the Central Education Curriculum
both at school and university levels. Various modern India institutions like The Akademies
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became the agencies for supplying the new forms of documents that were to be turned to
become the records of the post-Independence India. This included the targeting of tribals and
other regional communities at large. The Sixth Plan focused on the interlinkages of various
cultures with the Education at various levels. By the Seventh Plan, thrust was given to the
documentation of contemporary creativity, their documentation and preservation. Institution
like ASI, Museums, Tribal Arts, Oral Traditions were given funds to sensitize the youth.
INTACH and NCSM were allocated funds to conserve, preserve and document the tangible
and intangible heritage and popularising Science and Technology among students
respectively. The process of unlearning and relearning completed its full circle in the Seventh
Plan where the National Education Policy gave emphasis on the growth of child’s personality
in tandem with the promotion of inexpensive material culture of India. CCRT and several
cultural centres became operational during this plan. The promotion of modern Indian
regional languages was also a pivotal component in the NEP of 1986. Under the Eight Plan, a
lot of emphasis was given to the preservation of the tangible heritage of India (that we would
see in the section on Museums). In the post-Independence phase the archives had been
unleashed from the colonial hegemony and was converted into the edifice of nationalism.
The emphasis on the revival of archives got reflected in the establishment of A School of
Archival Studies in 1976 that even today offers one year diploma course and several short-
term courses with an intension to create archivists, preservationist, curators and
conservationist of the archival records. Since the NAI holds records that has legal sanctity in
any court of law, the functions of NAI are backed by a legal system that has evolved
parallelly with it. The notification under the title Historical Records Rules was formulated in
1970. By 1982, all non-current records where given access to any adult Indian Citizen
defined by the Constitution of India. The Public Records Act of 1993 gave legal accession of
records to NAI of Central Government Offices, PSUs, Union Territory administration,
statutory bodies, commissions and corporation. The Public Records Rule of 1997 further
strengthened the legal accession and management of NAI.
The fifth stage of development was marked by the process of digitization of records.
Many projects were taken to document and conserve what may have been lost otherwise in
various states. For instance, the government of Uttar Pradesh gave financial assistance for the
documentation of the local and regional records pertaining to the Revolt of 1857. One of the
prominent historians involved in this mammoth’s task was S.A.A Rizvi. This project could
document several such pivotal pieces of the event of revolt that would have been lost
otherwise. For instance, the Queen Victoria’s proclamation of 1857 that transferred the power
into the hands of the Crown was a piece of archival records under British India. However,
very few knew that Begum Hazrat Mahal, the queen of Awadh, who was sent to forced
asylum to Nepal after the revolt wrote point by point rebuttal of this proclamation. Since, the
rebuttal was almost lost in the Urdu documents this project was able to revive it from
oblivion. Many weekly, monthly and bi-annual magazines and papers in regional languages
were preserved in the form of several projects of NAI. The case in point is the famous Urdu
paper Jam-i-Jahan-Numa has been preserved by NAI whose cataloguing still awaits as we
37
speak. In the 125th year of NAI, i.e., 2017 NAI launched its e-portal Abhilekh Patal. This
marks the beginning of digital accession of the millions of records kept at the archives. A
joint partnership with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology is helping
the digitisation process that is regulated by the Centre for Development of Advance
Computing (C-DAC). The history and development of NAI that has its beginning in colonial
legacy is moving towards a more people-oriented and research friendly structure. Despite that
a lot of efforts is required to make great leaps in that direction.
Q.1. Did the Archives serve an imperial purpose?
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Q.2. Discuss the creations of knowledge by the British through enquiries and census
reports.
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Q.3. Name a few early surveyors.
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Q.4. How have Savyasachi Bhattacharya and Partho Chatterjee viewed imperial record
keeping.
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Q.5. How has the growth of Nationalism influenced record keeping?
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Q.6. Give examples of the biases in imperial record keeping.
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Q.7. Give examples of some private archives.
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Q.8. Examine the steps taken after independence for maintaining the Archives.
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Q.9. How important is the effort of keeping digital records?
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1.4 Museums
The origin of the word can be traced back to Greek word museion which means the temple of
the Muses, the Greek goddesses protecting the arts and sciences. The history of the first
museum construction dates back to third century BCE when Ptolemy I founded the great
museion of Alexandria. However, there have been evidences of collections of antiquities
from seventh century BCE Assyria, Northern Iraq. The famous Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal
collected 30,000 cuneiform tablets in his personal library. The famous tablet of the “Epic of
Gilgamesh” was housed in his library. Today, the cuneiform tablets are to be found in the
British Museum while the famous library of Alexandria was lost due to the burning of the
city of Alexandria by Julius Caesar in 48 BCE. The Romans were known to keep relics and
conserve them as medallion of their antiquity and cultural advancements. The Villa of Papyri
that had been rediscovered in eighteenth century; the library of Emperor Trajan, the library of
Celsus and the great library of Constantinople hold testimony to the claim.
In India, the idea of conserving the relics was part of the politico-religious structure. In
South India we find many Viragals (Hero-stones) that were to be found in various districts of
the ancient kingdoms. Similarly, several Meykritis and Prasaśtis were found across India
where the feudal lords and kings would give details of their might, territorial extent, their
patron gods and the cultural achievements of the rulers respectively. Also, we find several
relics in the form of stone, cave and pillar inscriptions that give references to the
administrative and economic aspect besides the religious affiliation of the kings. Another
important feature had been the state patronization of temples whose walls and the inscriptions
engraved either in the precinct or near the gates of the temple acted as a relic of art,
information and architectural advancements of the time period. The temple, therefore, were
the sites of ancient relics that also acted as a museum of a kind. The Buddhist stupas were the
house of the relics of Buddha and the Śakti Pithas were similarly the relics of the Mother
Goddess Devi had the same social objectivity as that of a modern museum, only that it
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manifested a sense of religiosity in ancient India. Considering these structures had similar
social objectivity one can find the traces of museology, in theory, back to third century BCE
itself.
The ancient and medieval literatures are replete with terms like Alekhyagriha, Vithi,
Citraśala et.al. that refer to the galleries housing paintings, sculptures and terra-cotta objects.
If the engravings were done on stones and Kalhaṇa, the first historian of India, claims to write
the history of kings in his Rājatarangiṇi one can surmise that there was some sort of
preservation of olden relics used to write history that began almost millennium before his
age. By the twelfth century CE, the Saṅskṛt plays Pratimā of Bhasa and Naisadhivacaritā of
Śriharśa mention about mobile and permanent exhibition galleries attached to the royal
courts. We also had audio-visual shows in medieval period in the form of kathaks who would
go to different region to tell and enact the stories of gods like the Cherial Scrolls of
Warangal; Chitrakathi by the Chitrakathi community of story tellers from Paithan (Andhra
Pradesh) or Savantvadi (Maharashtra) or Pinguli (Karnataka); Tholubommalata, the famous
flat leather show puppetry from Karnataka; Patachitra of Odisha; Kaavad Mobile Shrines of
Mewar and Marwar by Kaavadiya Bhats and Phad of Mewar by Bhopas (the story-teller
community) – are important component of the National Musuem of India today.
By the fourteenth century, Europe was witnessing the Renaissance or simply the revival
of cultural and artistic legacies of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Renaissance was a culmination of
Latin raritas (rarities) and curiositas (thirst for knowledge). The love for art objects, relics,
antiquities and natural history necessitated the rise of a new organisation. The feudal system
of Europe was transforming the social attribute of the seigneurie (rural lordship) towards a
more urban social character; implying that a neo-elite of rich at the major trading entrepôts
had led to a social change. The art of the royalty, that once included the Church and the King,
was now being claimed to be the art of the elites and with this was coined the term ‘museum’
in the fifteenth century Europe which meant collection of mementos. With the development
of archaeology in the eighteenth century many new relics and antiquities of the past were
revived that added to the collection of these great museums of Europe. The classical age had
paved the way to an industrial age wherein fresh new value objects were added to the realm
of museums. This new phase was called the age of neo-classicism. A new class of industrial
elites or simply the capitalist classes were the new entrants of the neo-elites and with their
taste also changed the nature of museum across Europe. For instance, the American War of
Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) liberalised arts that reached
universities through the education system. Nationalisation of museums, therefore, began. The
first national museum of the world, the British Museum was created in 1753 whereas the first
public museum in America came up in South Carolina in 1773. In 1793, the Palace of Louvre
was opened to the public with christening itself to the Museum of the Republic. Unlike the
archives, the museums, particularly after the 1793 transformation of the Louvre, was seen as
a new public institution. A process of transforming of several other private collections and
libraries were gradually opened for public display. The visual culture was now the domain of
popular culture. One such Nationalised Museum was opened in Copenhagen, Denmark where
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Christian Jürgensen Thomsen took the charge of the chief antiquarian. As archaeology was
unearthing a lot of artefacts belonging to the time even before history it was really a tough
task to segregate them in the museum for public display. One fine day he decided to change
the orthodox arrangement of displaying the objects according to the period they belonged to.
Instead, he segregated the pre-historic object according to their material basis. To his surprise
he was able to create a new method of segregation called Three Stage System where the
artefacts were arranged into stone, bronze and iron. He later published his new system of
classification in Scandinavian Antiquity in 1836. This system was well received in other
quarters of Europe and soon a new system of classification of Stone Age, Bronze Age and
Iron Age was adopted in academic writings, archaeological findings and museums. Harappan
Civilisation is referred to as a Bronze Age Civilisation even today.
In North America, the development of museum took a different turn. Here it remained
dependent on private initiative and committee services. In other words, here a concept of
exhibiting the findings according to the themes or taste of a particular community began to
gain ground. The museum movement of America paved the way for what was to be
developed into showcasing artefacts through exhibitions with inter-connected exchanges
among museums across the globe in modern times. By mid 1870s, USA alone had more than
200 museums that catered to various taste of the sponsors and target audience. For instance,
Charles Wilson Peale, a musicologist, established the famous Peale’s Museum in 1786 that
catered to music and musicians alone. Smithsonian Institution created their own museum in
1846. In London came the famous Victoria and Albert Museums that would house the largest
collection of Indian artefacts, that includes the famous ‘Gateway of Gwalior’, outside India.
The forerunners of museum movement in India where the British enthusiasts who had
the experience of museum from their own homeland. Also, looking at the profile of the first
class of antiquarians and archaeologists in British India all of them were in the civil services
and had little if not no knowledge of archaeology or museology whatsoever. Instead, the first
wave of development in India was inspired by both the boredom and curiosity to the find the
rarity of beauty in the realm of the ‘uncivilised’. In the beginning it was all a private affair.
The Company neither grant funds nor was it interested to engage until the Great Game
necessitated the demarcation of boundaries particularly towards the north-west frontier
province. The first forerunners were, therefore, spies sent under the garb as surveyors of the
land. In other words, surveying and finding artefacts was only a pre-occupation to keep an
eye on the Russians and the French, and that was their full-time occupation. William
Moorcroft, George Trebeck and Alexander Burnes were some noteworthy surveyors in the
service of the Company who were engaged in espionage beyond the North-West Frontier
Province and in due course discovered lot many things that was not on the official duty chart
for them to recover. The beginning of artefact collections in India began with boredom in the
service for being far from home, personal curiosity, a hobby and as a mere act of serendipity.
In the beginning the British rejected everything that was native. For them the Indian
forms of art and architecture were rudimentary. Partha Mitter’s study has also shown that the
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British failed to understand the complex art, architecture and iconography of India until they
had their first encounter with Buddhism. For the Victorians the period between second
century BCE to first century AD – when the stupas of Sānchī, Amravati and Bharhut were
constructed and the Gāndharā school of sculptures could have established a Greek influence
of Asiatic classical age – marked the classical age of art and culture. To much surprise the
‘Saracenic’ architecture of the Islamicate age was seen more as a political symbolism of
conflict between Islam and the West rather than representation of aesthetic beauty with the
comingling of traditions.
Q.1. Describe the meaning of the word museum.
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Q.2. What are the different forms of relics found in a museum?
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Q.3. Describe the different forms of exhibitions of ancient and medieval times.
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Q.4. Assess the role of nationalism in the creation of modern museums.
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Q.5. What is the Three Stage System of categorisation of artefacts?
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Q.6. How have the forms of exhibition in America influenced museums across the world?
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Q.7. Who were the first art collectors in British India?
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Q.8. What purposes did the museums serve for the British in India?
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Q.9. What objects aroused the interest of early curators?
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Q.10. Describe some of the themes around which museums have been built in today's India.
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1.5 Imperial Museum (Calcutta) and the National Museum of India (New Delhi)
In India, a museum is called Ajā’ib Ghar. Ajā’ib, a word borrowed from Persian, literally
means ‘wonder’; and so ajā’ib or the Urdu word originated out of it ajēb meaning ‘strange’
give us ‘Wonder House or Strange House’ as the literal translation of Ajā’ib Ghar. The
famous novel of Rudyard Kipling ‘Kim’ bridged the gap of introducing the West with a
translation and Indians a concept of a museum. The first attempt at creating a museum in
India is closely associated with the first orientalist attempt to understand, report, codify and
document India. William Jones founded The Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and within its
campus was proposed the first museum in 1814. By the time 1814 arrived, H. T. Colebrook
had become the fourth president of ASB who had given it a more concrete shape of an
institution with its own library and a museum within the campus. The first phase of curious
findings of an antiquarian was over and now a more serios endeavour was conjoined with
curatorship. Archaeology was working hand in glove with the museum now. In fact, Tapti
Guha-Thakurta argues that there was a close approximation of each other’s function – a
museum collected, labelled and displayed while an archaeologist named, described and
documented. The second phase began with a more organised system to bring order to the vast
material found from across the sub-continent. However, the central motive was to collect and
not display. The collection was meant for a small closed circles of Westerners who
appreciated its value. The idea of public display of these artefacts was not yet on the charts.
Of all the collections, India’s natural history got the attention of the British. The specimens of
exotic and peculiar botanical and zoological subjects got their attention and also it required
less of managerial skills. The growing interest in ethnology and natural history culminated to
produce a new genre called The Company Paintings. The polarity towards the natural history
was so much so that the first curator of this museum was Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, an amateur
botanist by profession. The museum was soon divided into archaeological/ethnological and
geological/zoological sections. More than archaeological findings, the geological findings
found more audience. Soon the Museum of Economic Geology was separated under a new
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curator in 1856. Throughout the 1860s and 70s in Calcutta the museum remained largely
under the domination of the botanists and naturalists. The demand of opening up museums on
Economic Geology in Madras and Bombay led to the establishment of similar museums in
1851 and 1855 respectively.
Parallel to the development of natural history museum, the interest in the newfound love
for machines and industries began to spread in the alleys of the museums. Commerce and
aesthetics came together in this stage. India’s craftmanship, exotic regalia and designs now
got to get space in the museums. However, there display was done differently through the
‘exhibitions.’ London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition, “The Great Exhibition of the Industry of
All Nations” was organised in 1851. As Tapti Guha-Thakurta rightly pointed out, “Like the
botanical specimens acquired in museums, the craft objects, too, would now be subjected to
the same orders of identification, organization, and classification, according to a variety of
schemes (period, place of origin, nature of the raw material, production process, style of
design). The Great Exhibition inaugurated a pervasive trend of displays, collections, and
publications in England and India, centered around the decorative arts of the empire.”
Exhibitions became an intrinsic part of the domain of the museum. The collections of the
museums occasionally were shown in the exhibitions but the exhibition items gathered and
grouped together for that purpose alone finally found the permanent place in the museums.
The two stalwarts that shaped the course of museums in India were James Fergusson and
Alexander Cunningham. The shift from natural history to archaeology and finally the shift
from monuments outside the realm of museum to bringing the artefacts inside the museum
was a long process of evolution. By the year 1857 there were twelve museums in the whole
of the Indian peninsula. The dawn of the twentieth century was an era of awakening and great
reforms. Lord Curzon revived the archaeological Survey of India with a view to surveying
and exploring the relics of ancient Indian culture and also for opening the site-museums on
important sites. Several site museums in places like Saranath, Pagan, Taxila, Mohenjadora
and Harappa (now in Pakistan), Nalanda, were established in the early years of the existence
of the department. Later a few more site museums came at Chamba, Jodhpur in 1909,
Khajuraho and Gwalior in 1910 and Dacca (now in Bangladesh) in 1931. Dr. J.P. Vogel
produced the first Directory of Indian Museums by supplying detailed information relating to
each of the museums which were then thirty-nine in number, to the conference of Orientlists
at Madras. In the year 1936 a grant was offered by the Carnegie Corporation, New York to
make a survey of the Indian museums. The work was entrusted to Markham, M.P. and H.
Hargreaves, former Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, who visited all
the existing museums in the country and brought out the Report on the Museums of India the
first standard work of its kind. It includes one hundred and five museums which were taken
into consideration for the above report.
The last fifty years have been significant for the growth of museums and the museums
profession in India. There are more than 400 museums in India today. Although the
archaeology and art museums are more in number yet, the museums devoted to specific
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subjects have also been developed to carry out their educational programmes in different
fields of human knowledge. The Craft Museum, New Delhi, the Health Museum, Hyderabad
and the Textile Museum, Ahmedabad are some of the examples of this type. The history and
personalia museums, apart from archaeology museums, are very few and or recent growth.
The Victoria Memorial Calcutta, for the British period, the Ravindranath Tagore Museum,
Shantiniketan, the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya, New Delhi, the Fort St. George Museum,
Madras and the Nehru Memorial Museum at Tinmurti Bhavan in New Delhi illustrate this
type of musuems. Owing to the rapid growth of technology and industry in the country the
latest types, which have been developed recently, are the museums of pure and applied
sciences, technology and industry. The Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, Calcutta,
was established in 1959. The Central Museum of the Birla Educational Trust at Pilani lays
more emphasis on agriculture. Similarly, the Visveswaraya Industrial and Technological
Museum at Bangalore is another example. Similar Science Centers are being developed at
Bombay, Patna, Bhopal and other places. A Museum of Man devoted to anthropology is
being developed at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. A group of museums attached to the Forest
College, Dehradun, having separate sections on silviculture, timber, minor forest products
and entomology is another noteworthy addition. The Agriculture Museum, Coimbatore
contains samples of geological formation, agriculture implements, soils and manure. There
are various museums devoted to the Engineering and Medical Sciences as well. The
children's museums and Bal Bhavans, although of later origin are of considerable
significance. The National Museum of Natural History at New Delhi is an excellent example
of its kind, although still in formative stage. A number of University museums are run under
various departments as teaching centres of different disciplines. The museums, like all other
social institutions have changed through times. They have changed in form, in function and in
basic concept. A museum has now changed from a repository of objects to an educational
agency. Its policy to collect isolable objects has changed and it now emphasizes to integrate
an object and its social and natural networks with the visitor's experience. A museum is now
no more a privilege for a few but it serves the society as a whole. Over and above this change
a museum is today an active participation in the socio-cultural life of the community which it
stands for. A general definition of museum on a broad international basis is given in Article
of the Statutes of the International Council of Museums 1974. It says that a museum is a non-
profit making permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open
to the public which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits for purposes
of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of man and his environment. The
growing appreciation for culture, cultural tourism, impressive international exhibitions and
huge promotional campaigns have provided extraordinary impetus to museum-movement and
to world-wide popularity of museum as places for leisure and education. The museums have
thus become a social phenomenon wherein the recreational and experiential functions are
predominant. There have thus grown several kinds of museums, devoted to every field of
knowledge and human experience. The diversified network of museum, such as the museums
of archaeology, history, civilization, natural science, art, architecture, maritime and other
45
scientific disciplines have grown throughout the world. Besides their typological differences,
the museums have assumed diversified role also. Science Centre’s and youth museums in the
United States, with the least collection centres and most educationally oriented sectors, are
probably the fastest growing. The sophistication of interactive technologies allows visitors to
engage themselves in personalized dialogue with the environment. The Ottawa based
National Museum of Science and Technology is a good example. Similarly, the recently
designed Biodome, the first museum garden dedicated to the environment at Montreal, is
unique for its naturalistic ideas and architectural wonder. With the opening of the Centre
Georges - Pompidou in Paris in 1977 a new era of art museum was started. With its interior
spaces recognized in 1985, the centre Georges-Pompidou is the pioneer of the new trends in
the field of museum-movement. We have come a long way from showcasing our heritage to
adding heritage to the personality of a person either through education or casual visitation –
after all what good a relic of our past be for if we don’t have access to it.
1.6 Bibliography
Aziz, Sana. (2016). “National Archives of India: The Colonisation of Knowledge and Politics
of Preservation”.B EPW, Vol. LII (50) December 16: 33-39.
Barringer, Tim and Flynn, Tom (eds.). (1998). Colonialism and the Object. Routledge:
London.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi. (2019). Archiving the Raj. Oxford University Press: New Delhi.
Chatterjee, Partha, Thakurta, Tapti Guha and Kar, Bodhisattva. (2014). New Cultural
Histories of India: Materiality and Practices. Oxford University Press: New Delhi.
Cohn, Bernard S. (1996). Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India.
Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Filliozat, Jean (1950): “Archives and Their Make-up in Ancient India and the Countries with
Indian Culture.” Indian Archives (Cuvelier Number), Vol 4, No 2, National Archives of
India, pp 126–35, New Delhi.
Hunter, W. W. (1871). The Indian Mussulmans. London: Trubner and Company (reprint)
Premier Book House: Lahore (1964).
Johnson, Arthur R. (1950). A Teacher’s Guide for Museum Visit. Unpublished Project,
University of South California: USA.
Lal, Ruby. (2011). “The Lure of the Archive: New Perspectives from South Asia.” Feminist
Studies, Vol 37 (1): 93 -110.
Mantena, Rama. (2007). “The Question of History in Pre-colonial India.” History and
Theory, Vol 46 (3), Wesleyan University: 399-401.
NAI Report 1948-1952. A Quinquennial Review
46
Panikkar, K N. (2003). “Colonialism, Culture and Revivalism.” Social Scientist, Vol 31 (1–
2): 4 -7.
Report of the Steering Committee for Formulation of Ninth Plan (1997-2002). (1997).
Planning Commission, Education Division: Yojana Bhawan.
Thakurta, Tapti Guha. (2004). Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial
and Post-Colonial India. Columbia University Press: New York.
Yale, Elizabeth. (2015). “The History of the Archives: The State of the Discipline.” Book
History, Vol. 18: 332-359.
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Unit 3
Conserving the Future of the Past in Present

The Process of Documentation & Preservation of Records in India
Rohan
Assistant Professor
Maitreyi College
University of Delhi
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The ‘Enemies’ of Records
1.3 Pre-Independence Developments and Researches
1.4 Techniques, Methods and Developments Post-Independence
1.5 When Future meets the Past: Digitizing the Records
1.6 National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM)
1.7 Bibliography
1.0 Objectives
This lesson will inform you of:
1. Processes undertaken in colleting and preserving the records.
1.1 Introduction
In the previous chapter “History and Development of Archives and Museums in India’ we
saw the shaping of the two institutions – their evolution, impact, effect and politics. In this
chapter, we would lay emphasis on the grammar of these institutional frameworks. In other
words, we would not focus here on what the records say or artefacts look like rather we
would see how do we save them for posterity? For a historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and
sociologist what is written in the records and what the artefacts entail help them construct
meaning whereas for an archivist and a curator the material with which the record is made of
and the artefacts prepared with are more important because if the material is lost the meaning
is lost. The process of meaning making begins from the technicalities of collecting,
documenting, preserving, and yet, despite all odds showcasing it to the people who constantly
engage with them on a regular basis. In that sense, a role of an archivist and a curator is much
more than what meets our eyes. Philip C. Brooks in Public Records Management argues that
“records are means by which public officials in a democracy are accountable to the people.
They are tools of administration, the memory of the organisation, the embodiment of
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experience, protectors of legal rights and sources of many kinds of information… and they
merit ‘real attention’.”
1.2 The ‘Enemies’ of Records
Most part of the expenditure of NAI and National Museum of India (NMI) is spent in the
preservation of the records and artefacts that they house. However, here preservation differs
from the general understanding of the term – it has to be preserved in a way that it could be
used as well. This dual attribute that these institutions have to manage makes both keeping
and preserving on the one hand and showcasing and physical contact on the other hand
equally important; and thus, huge burden on the institutional exchequer. Preservation from
the improper use of the material is a third dimension of these houses of wisdom that cannot
be neglected as well. To discourage improper and unsolicited usage of them the Constitution
of India under the Seventh Schedule placed NAI and NMI under the Central List and so any
improper usage would deem punishment according to law of the land. The authority of the
Government of India over these institutions entails their worth for the nation, and thus to
protect them the government funnels in expensive measures.
Preservation is required from nature – dust, light, fire, water, heat, time, atmospheric
gases, fungi, vermin, rodents; and humans. These problems are more acute because India,
geographically speaking, falls on the tropics and so it experiences extremes of all climate.
The records are therefore destined to perish and the primary role of an archivist and curator is
to prolong it as far as possible. A record kept at NAI and NMI (except sculptures and
artefacts) is principally made of paper, palm leaf, parchment, (the seals are made of ink,
carbon, pencil wax, typewriter ribbon), cloth, leather, photographic film, sound recording and
prints. A simple fire can turn them into ashes; “Acts of God” like earthquakes and lightening
or man-made wars and bombing can destroy these records in fraction of a second and so it is
beyond archivist’s or curator’s area of expertise. Thence, the enemies of records which an
archivist and a curator prepare themselves against are dust, light, heat, time, atmospheric
gases, fungi, vermin, rodents and humans. One such initiative post-Independence was taken
up in 1985, under the aegis of South and West Asian Regional Branch of the International
Council on Archives (SWARBICA) with NAI, an international seminar was held on
“Conservation of Traditional Records – Papers and Allied Materials” from 16th-19th
December at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. Foreign archivists from Australia, Nepal, Iran, Sri-
Lanka and Pakistan also participated besides NAI and major other state and regional archives
of India.
Q.1. What is the special significance of the records preserved in the Archives?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
49
Q.2. What are the different forms of records required to be preserved?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.3. What makes preservation more difficult in a country like India?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
1.3 Pre-Independence Developments and Researches

The Indian Historical Records Commission (IHRC) was set up in 1919 by the Government of
British-India. It marked the first official attempt to preserve records that were of permanent
value. With the help of government funding J. J. Sudborough and M. M. Mehta of the Indian
Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore undertook the study The Perishing of Paper in Indian
Libraries in 1920s. Their study revealed fascinating findings: 1) the proportion of perished
papers in Indian archives is much higher than that of European or American Libraries; 2) the
papers used in India have higher impure cellulose and high acid content; 3) hot and humid
climate accelerates the decaying process; 4) method of treating paper with arsenical
preparation and corrosive sublimates like mercuric chloride to save them from insects and
vermin are no less harmful; 5) the papers corrode where the ink is used in the paper i.e., the
ink used also was high on acidic content and the corrosion of the paper is more where there
are texts, and the corrosion does not spread farther from the actual ink marks. In their study
they concluded that the paper and ink used should be acid free and all those records which are
important for permanent keeping should be transferred onto them and must be kept in an air-
conditioned room. The National Bureau of Standards, Washington D.C (US) had concluded
that optimal benefit is obtained when the room is maintained at a temperature of 80
Fahrenheit and the relative humidity is maintained at 50 per cent. The use of air-conditioning
rooms also had other advantage. It helped in neutralising atmospheric gases and keeping the
dust out. Back in the days of the Raj when the steam engines were in vogue and the coal and
oil fuelled factories in towns vented out gases through the chimneys adversely affected the
records. The most dangerous among the gases was the Sulphuric dioxide (SO2) whose
dilution to even 0.5 to 1 per cent in the air was readily absorbed by the paper fibres. The gas
then combined with the oxygen and moisture present in the air would produce Sulphuric acid
which affects the cellulose fibre and consequently destroys the fibre structure of the paper.
2SO2(g)+O2(g)+2H2O(l)⟶2H2SO4
With time the increase in the amount of sulphuric acid would accelerate the effect on papers.
Thus, freeing the air from the sulphur dioxide was an essential part of the preservation of
records. The air-condition system would cut out the supply of outer air in the repository room
and a regulated air is pumped into the room through the spray chambers of the air-condition
50
where chilled water is used for controlling the moisture in the room and when treated with
alkaline solutions like Soda ash (Na2CO3), Potassium dichromate (K2Cr2O7) and Sodium
silicate (Na2SiO3) effectively oxidises the air and removes sulphur dioxide from it. The
alkaline wash also removed a large proportion of the dust in the incoming room. However,
owing to the Great Depression of 1929 and its prolonged effect in the 1930s on India and the
subsequent call for the World War II derailed the process until 1940s. The scientific
preservation to be put to practice had to wait for two decades.
It was one such India specific study that relieved archivists and preservationists from a
lot of confusion that they had in those days. For instance, their study revealed that a paper is
less susceptible to ‘perishing’ if it has more than 70 per cent fibre, not more than 2 per cent
rosin with normal acidity of pure alum and not more than 10 per cent of total mineral matter.
In fact, the study gave scientific explanation to why the old medieval books, insha and
firmans were less susceptible to perishing than the books that were written quarter of a
century ago in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Material Sound/ Perfect Condition Distinctly Perished or quite

(In per cent) brittle
(In per cent)
Cotton 51 38
Flax 40 36
Flax and Cotton 38 40
Esparto 18 64
TABLE 1.1: Comparative composition in percentage of a sound and a perishable paper
finding on books across libraries of India, US & Britain in 1920
Esparto grass was first introduced in 1860 while the use of straw in making paper had
begun from 1851 onwards. The study revealed that Esparto and straw are free from gelatine,
a material that binds the fibre in the paper and provides tensile strength to the structure. The
printing of books shifted to straw pulp papers in 1851 and by 1860 the esparto grass became a
regular component. It was cheaper than cotton and flax however its shelf life was mostly
seventy years. Since the medieval paper makers didn’t use esparto or straw or bamboo the
shelf life of those records survived the test of time, unlike those papers that were produced
post-1860s. Perhaps this is one of the finest examples of modernisation and technology
innovation having disastrous effect.
51
TABLE 1.2: Timeline of the major developments in the paper making industry in last six
centuries before the first scientific study of 1920.
Q.1. How the Indian Institute of Science described the perils of preserving records in
India?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.2. What scientific steps were recommended before 1929 to preserve the records?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.3. How does the quality of paper help in preservation?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
1.4 Techniques, Methods and Developments Post-Independence
Post-World War II, the IHRC began the first programme for the restoration of the records on
the basis of scientific technologies that were practised in France, Germany, Britain and
America. A Research Laboratory was established for this purpose at the Imperial Record
Department that was later renamed National Archives of India (NAI). Post-Independence, the
IHRC started a Post-War Development Programme for NAI in 1948 whose objectives
included air-conditioned rooms, usage of vacuum fumigation technique and adoption of
52
lamination of weak and fragile records. The laminating hydraulic vacuum fumigation vault
and air-conditioning unit were imported from USA and Canada respectively. In 1950, NAI
introduced a mechanical document-restoration programme. The first major breakthrough of
the Research Laboratory suited for the Indian conditions came in the form of development of
solvent lamination technique. Since this technique was a cold press technique it replaced the
high pressure and heat method used in the mechanised lamination process. Cutting of heat
and high pressure, the two enemies of record, marked the first step towards a successful
archiving system in India. By the 1960s, this technique was in vogue for preserving paper
documents across all major archives and libraries of the world.
The study conducted by Sudborough and Mehta in 1920s was implemented finally with
the launch of a new programme for formulating Standards for “Paper for Permanent
Records”, “Permanent Writing Ink” and other connected concerns regarding the usage of
material in collaboration with Indian Standards Institution. The programme bore fruits for
restorers when they were able to develop a new variety of hand made paper and the very fine
silk gauze (chiffon) for repairing the document. The Forest Research Institute, Dehradun
successfully created a high-grade tissue paper that was to help the archivists in restorations.
The other material required for restoration, the cellulose acetate foil, came expensive. The
issue of availability, accessibility and affordability of cellulose acetate foil made archivists
look for alternatives, and that, led them to collaborate with the Jewish National Library,
Israel, Archives in Austria and Federal Republic of Germany and learn from them the leaf
casting process technique.
Preservation can delay the decay however it cannot reverse or stop the process
completely. The methods and technologies that were either imported or created through
various programmes to cater to the preservation process required painstaking commitment,
trained and skilful people and their regular engagement with refresher and re-orientation
workshops. It necessitated funds and permanent arrangements in the repositories of records –
and both could hardly be managed by the NAI let alone leave the plight of regional and the
state archives. As mentioned, putting out the air-conditioning system was delayed by almost
40 years even after the risks were known to the incumbent directors and chairs. Most of the
regional centres had to depend on make shift arrangements and whatever month of the year
one visited the building or the system required repair of something or the other. The famous
National Library, Kolkata that was housed in the 200 years old building, now called Bhasa
Bhawan since 2005 was in news because of the destruction of more than 20,000 rare archival
records. The destruction could have been avoided if the maintenance of the ceiling that costed
₹148 crores in 2005 would have been done with some sense of the requirement of the
building and employment of skilful staff who are trained to take care of the records. The state
of denial of the top officials of the library, including the Director, can be gauged from the fact
that Bhasa Bhawan had a broken back door, no security, leakage in the AC duct from where
the waterdrops would directly fall on the records. Among many important records a rare
newspaper collection of the colonial era Anglo-Indian Recorder was completely destroyed.
53
Sl. No. Year Plan ₹ in Crores
Outlay Expenditure
1 I (1951-56) - *
2 II (1956-61) 4.00 3.00
3 III (1961-66) 10.00 7.00
4 IV (1969-74) 13.00 12.00
5 V (1974-80) 37.00 28.00
6 VI (1980-85) 84.00 115.63
7 VII (1985-90) 482.00 451.00
8 VIII (1992-97) 802.69 #
*Not available sector wise #Central/State actual figures not available
TABLE 1.3: Financial Outlays on Art, Culture, Library, Archives, Museum Informatics,
Book Production and Language Development from I to VIII Five Year Plan
The NAI building required to be planned scientifically and after much derailment and
delay at the hands of the colonial bureaucratic machinery it finally got designed in
collaboration with Indian Standards Institution – “Indian Standards: 2663: 1977 – Code of
Practice Relating to Primary Elements in the Design of Buildings of Archives” was
formulated.
A scientifically planned building has mechanised muniment rooms keeping in mind the
air-conditioning and cooling system on the one hand and humidity control system on the
other hand with a proper electricity panel system that does not cause fire. An archival
building therefore requires much more planning than any ordinary building. The safety
measures against fire, calamities like flood and earthquake are also important aspect of
planning. The “act of God” may not be stopped but the affects can be controlled.
Indigenously invented smoke alarms system coupled with automatic gas sprinklers like Halon
and Carbon Dioxide installation is thus required. If one looks at the flooring of the archive it
is also very interesting. Usage of wooden flooring is a generally accepted as a norm from the
colonial age. The wood of Sal tree was most favoured amongst the others because it dried
without cracking or losing shape, was much lighter and yet 65 per cent harder than all wood
varieties used in constructional works, easy to work on by tools, was anti-insecticidal attack
and most importantly fire resistant. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century the British
Navy had replaced their oak variety ships with Indian Sal woods. It increased the shelf life of
a ship in the saline waters of the oceans from 12 to 35 years. The Sal wood was therefore the
first choice when it came to archival flooring. The second choice was Deodar, however, due
to its distance from the transportation routes in the Kumaun belt this variety remained less
desired due to inaccessibility. The variety of tree was never used for this purpose was Chir as
it produced resin which is highly inflammable as is one of the most common cause of forest
fires.
54
Another enemy of records are the insects and vermin and so a planned fumigation
mechanism becomes an important aspect of preservation. The NAI used thymol in wooden
rooms and Para dichlorobenzene in steel vaulted rooms. A vacuum fumigation chamber was
also installed at NAI were Ethylene dioxide and Carbon dioxide solutions were used.
However, owing to disastrous effects on the health of the staff the usage of Ethylene dioxide
was stopped and was gradually replaced by Methyl bromide. Although it is too to be handled
with caution thus making the custodian of an archive at high risk if not skilled and trained.
The training and locating professionals and skilled craftsmen were always a problem in a
country obsessed with a sense of supremacy of collar job orientation. To reduce the problem
of shortage of manpower The School of Archival Studies, NAI introduced two diploma
courses in 1980, namely – “Conservation of Documentary Archives and Library Materials”
and “Servicing and Repair of Records”. The syllabus and the model of the courses were
designed by National Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property and the
National Museum. Until many diploma courses have been launched by NAI and it undertakes
the skill development workshops for the young professionals who want to work in library
sciences and archive management – a field which still remains highly under-explored by the
youth of the country.
Q.1. Describe the chief features of the efforts taken during this period for preservation.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.2. What aspect of preservation was more suited to India?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.3. What is the importance of a sound building in the preservation of records? Give an
example.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.4. Analyse the threat to the records by insects and the ways of dealing with it.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
55
Q.5. Highlight the importance of trained professionals in keeping the records.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
1.5 When Future meets the Past: Digitizing the Records
In order to restore the most fragile records the method used is Digitization. Gradually all the
records are being digitised across the major archives of the world. Digitization that includes
photography, audio recording, micro-filming gives perpetual lease of life to documents that
would be lost one day. However, contrary to the general belief, digital archiving of records is
much more susceptible to permanent loss than the physical method of archiving system. A
digital record is prone to virus, spyware, malware and corrupt internal or external drive. It
requires further training and meticulous preservation and record saving understanding
otherwise the records would become obsolete. Every age has transformed itself through their
sense of technology. And we have moved from what we may refer to analog data on clay
terracotta seals, stones, ceramic, bark leaves and paper to digital methods. The twentieth
century technology revolution brought information handling to the archives as well and with
that a new age record preservation method developed that was way faster, easier and cheaper
made gradually.
Medium Data Medium Age/Year Ideal Expected Life
Type of Expectancy of
Invention Medium
Analog Clay/Stone Tablets 8000 >4000 years
BCE
Analog Pigment on Paper 3500 >2000 years
BCE
Analog Oil on Paper 600 CE Centuries
Analog Silver Halide (Black & White) 1820 >100 years
Photographic Film
Analog Modern Colour Photographic Films 1860 Decades
Analog Phonograph Record 1877 >120 years
Analog & Magnetic Tape (VCR) 1928 Decades
Digital
Analog & Magnetic Disk (Floppy) 1950 3-20 years
Digital
Analog & Polycarbonate Optical WORM Disk 1990 5-20 years
Digital (CD)
TABLE 1.4: Evolution of Conservation media and their life expectancy
56
The table well describes that the digital method of recording has less life expectancy than
analog systems. Despite that the digital method is used across the major libraries of the
world. The reason is the storage capacity and less involvement of physical spaces including
human interference. That can be understood through another table. A lot of encoding
techniques have developed particularly in the last two decades that has improved digitization
manifolds. Also, computer education from the primary school onwards and the recently
emphasis on the inclusion of Coding from the level of primary schooling under New
Education Policy of 2020 has been a commendable move in this regard.
Medium Audio Data Medium Recording capacity (minutes
Type per square meter)
Analog 6.35 mm wide 13.8
190.5 mm per second
Reel to reel magnetic tape
Analog 33-1/3 RPM vinyl album 411
Analog 90- minutes audio cassette 184
Digital Compact Disk 8,060
Digital 60-meter digital audio tape 500
Digital 2 Terabyte 89-milimeter hard disk 4,680,000
TABLE 1.5: Increased density means increased capacity that gives more storage capacity for
record keeping
Q.1. Assess the importance of digitization in maintaining the records.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.2. What are the hazards that digitization faces?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
1.6 National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM)
The development of National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) in 2013 as regards to
inclusion of Manuscript Conservation Centers (MRCs), establishment of Manuscript
Conservation Centers (MCCs), Survey, Documentation, Cataloguing, Digitization, Capacity
Building, Outreach and Publication Programmes was a positive move in the direction. The
National Mission for Manuscripts (NAMAMI) is an autonomous organization under Ministry
of Culture, Government of India, established to survey, locate and conserve Indian
manuscripts, with an aim to create national resource base for manuscripts for enhancing their
57
access, awareness and use for educational purposes. The Mission was initiated in February
2003, by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India and Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is the nodal agency for the execution of this project.
India possesses an estimate of five million manuscripts, probably the largest collection in the
world. These cover a variety of themes, textures and aesthetics, scripts, languages,
calligraphies, illuminations and illustrations. Together, they constitute the ‘memory' of India's
history, heritage and thought. The National Mission for Manuscripts aims to locate,
document, preserve Indian manuscripts and make these accessible—to connect India's past
with its future (www.ignca.nic.in). The National Mission for Manuscripts works with the help
of 54 Manuscript Resource Centres and 49 conservation centers established across the
country. The MRCs include well established Indological institutes, museums, libraries,
universities and non-government organizations those function as the Mission's coordinating
agencies in their respective regions. The present paper is an attempt to focus on the all-round
activities of NMM.
The first major initiative by the mission was to find out the exact number of manuscripts
that required immediate attention according to various zones of the country. The table 1.6
depicts zone wise distribution of manuscripts as well as States and Union territories included
in each zone i.e., North, South, East, West and Central. It shows that highest number of
manuscripts are available in north zone that are 421409 (30.53%), whereas second highest
number of manuscripts are available in south zone that are 374307 (27.12%), then third
highest number of manuscripts are in east zone i.e. 250124 (18.12%), then the number of
manuscripts available in west zone are 255555 (18.52%) and lastly the lowest number of
manuscripts available in central zone i.e. 78810 (5.71%) respectively along with the number
of MRCs covered under different zones are 17 (31.48%), 15 (27.78%), 11 (20.37%), 8
(14.81%) and 3 (5.71%) respectively.
Zones Number of No. of MRCs in No. of Per cent of
States & Manuscript per cent Manuscripts manuscripts
UTs Records
included Centres
(MRCs)
North 8 (6 states + 17 31.48 421409 30.53
2 UTs)
South 5 (4 states + 15 27.78 374307 27.12
1 UT)
East 6 11 20.37 250124 18.12
West 3 8 14.81 255555 18.52
Central 1 3 5.56 78810 5.71
Total 23 54 100.0 1380205 100.0
TABLE 1.6: Distribution of Manuscripts and MRCs across various zones
58
Further, the old cataloguing method has been replaced by the digitised method.
Therefore, cataloguing is one of the major activities and objectives of the Mission. In order to
catalogue the vast treasure of manuscripts the Mission has evolved a solid methodology of
three standard formats known as: Questionnaire, CAT-CAT and Manus. The objective of
questionnaire is to prepare a National Directory of Manuscript repositories, whereas CAT-
CAT is a catalogue of catalogues (compilation of published catalogues by different
institutions) and Manus deals with the data sheets of manuscripts with detailed information
on each manuscript such as title, author, commentary, language, script, name of the
repository, name of the scribe (if available), date of the manuscript number of folios and
pages and other such relevant details.
NMM is quite a success story since they have been able to digitise a total of 55,255
manuscripts across 11 archival institutions across India divided in zones and are in the
process of completing all the other left. East Zone - Odisha State Museum, Odisha and
Krishna Kanta Handique Library, Guwahati, Assam; Central - Dr. Hari Singh Gaur
University, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Kundakunda Jnanapeeth, Indore, Madhya Pradesh and
Bharat Itihas Samsodhan Mandal, Pune; North - Himachal Academy of Arts, Culture and
Languages, Simla, Himachal Pradesh, Virndavan Research Institute, Virndavan Uttar Pradesh
and Bhogilal Leherchand Institute of Indology; South - French Institute of Pondicherry,
Pondicherry and Institute of Asian Studies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu; and WEST - Anandashram
Sansthan, Pune, Maharashtra. The National Mission for manuscripts has taken the initiative
to nominate Indian Manuscripts for inclusion in UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Under this programme, UNESCO provides recognition to the most valuable documentary
heritage of the world and facilitates its preservation and provides universal access to it. The
Shaiva manuscripts in Pondicherry were awarded the status of UNESCO’s Memory of the
World in 2005; where as “Gita Govinda” and “Chikitsha Manjari” Manuscripts from Odisha
State Museum, Bhubaneswar, Odisha achieved the same status being included in the Memory
of the World of UNESCO in 2005.
Manuscripts form an invaluable part of India’s documentary heritage, they capture our
thoughts, achievements, experience and lessons learnt from history. The present study draws
the following conclusions on the basis of above observations.
• The National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) is the first consolidated national effort
devoted towards the preservation of manuscripts.
• The NMM functions through different types of centers known as MRCs and MCCs
and these centers are established throughout the country.
• As regards to the year of establishment of MRCs it goes back to the year 1700A.D
and it is observed that highest number of MRCs (19) have been established during the
period 1950- 1975 A.D.
59
• There is total 13, 80,205 Manuscripts available in Manuscript Resource Centres under
NMM. These manuscript resource centres are distributed over 5 different zones of
India such as North, South, East, West and Central zone.
• It has been observed that, highest number of manuscripts have been documented
during the year 2007-08 (8, 13,151) and the total number of manuscripts received for
documentation are 32, 79,028.
• The NMM has taken up the digitization work and total numbers of institutions
covered are eleven where as the number of manuscripts digitized are 55, 255.
• NMM has adopted has introduced a solid methodology of 3 standard formats known
as questionnaire, CAT – CAT and Manus for cataloguing of manuscripts.
• The Mission organizes workshops and trainings on regular basis for capacity building
activities.
• Organisation of seminars is one of the regular activities of the Mission and it has
conducted 33 numbers of seminars on different topics till the year 2011.
• Publication of unpublished manuscripts, critical edition of manuscripts, seminar
papers, lectures occupy prime emphasis by NMM. Under this scheme the books
which are published are Tattavabodha, Samrakshika, Samikshika, Kirtibodha,
Prakashika, The Word is Sacred; Sacred is the Word, Vijnananidhi & Shabad Guru.
The preservation and documentation have come along way since the inception of the first
colonial archives in Kolkata. The preservation is more than what it looks to a general public.
It is more scientific than it looks and the burden of the safe keeping of records has to be
shouldered by the skilled and technically sound people who not only understand the
pivotality of the records but also the responsibility they shoulder. As a nation we must
prepare the coming generation to be conscious of their heritage and the importance of its safe
keeping – after all the records does not only tell us about our past but founds the future before
us carved on a relic of failures, successes, material culture and the philosophy that brought us
so far.
Q.1. What efforts were taken to save the manuscripts?
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
Q.2. Name the nadal agency for this task.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
60
Q.3. Name the centres located in Orissa, Assam and Madhya Pradesh.
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
1.7 Bibliography
Ahmed, F. (2009). “Digitization as a Means of Preservation of Manuscripts: Case study of
Osmania University Library”, in 7th International CALIBER 2009, Pondicherry University,
Puducherry, 25-27 February 2009, INFLIBNET Centre, Ahmedabad: 93- 97.
Arora, Jagdish. (2009). “Integrating network-enabled digitized collection with traditional
library and information services: Brewing a heady cocktail at the IIT Delhi. In: IT and Digital
Library Development” (ed. Ching-chih Chen). West Newton, MicroUse Information: 7-16.
Chakravorti, S. (1949). “Preservation of Records”. The Indian Listener, 24th July, XIV (16): 5 –
12.
Choudhury, G. G. (2004), Access to Information in Digital Libraries: Users and Digital
Divide. In: TERI 2004. ICDL: International Conference on Digital Libraries 2004:
Knowledge Creation, Preservation, Access and Management: New Delhi: 24-27.
Conway, Paul. (1997). Preservation in digital world. Microform and Imaging Review, 25(4):
156-171
Ghosh, Rituparna. (2012). “Palm leaf Manuscripts Conservation - A study”, Global Research
Methodology Journal, V.4.
India, (2002) “Department of Culture: National Mission for Manuscript”, “Project
Document” (2004), 36p. V.1: 56-64
Jantz, Ronald and Giarlo, Michael J. (2005). “Architecture and Technology for Trusted
Digital Repositories. D-Lib Magazine”. 11 (6).
Karp, Ivan and Levine, D. Steven (Eds.). (1991). Exhibiting Culture. Smithsonian Institution
Press: Washington.
Morris, D. (1898). “Report of Committee on the Deterioration of Paper”. The Journal of the
Society of Arts, 46 (2387): 785 - 796. Accessed July 15, 2021, from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41334405.
Report of the Steering Committee for Formulation of Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) on Art
and Culture Libraries and Informatics, Language Development and Book Promotion. (1997).
Education Division, Planning Commission, Yojana Bhawan: Government of India.
Robertson, F. C. Ford. (1936). Our Forests. Superintendent, Printing and Stationery, United
Province: India.
61
Shahani, Chandaru J. Wilson, K. William. (1987). “Preservation of Libraries and archives”.
American Scientist, 75 (3), May-June 1987: 240 - 51.
Sudborough, J. J. and Mehta, M. M. (1920). “The Perishing of Paper in Indian Libraries”.
Journal of the Indian Institute of Science. 3: 119 – 226.
Tucker, Richard P. (2012). A Forest History of India. Sage: New Delhi.
62

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B.A.

(Programme) Semester-IV History

SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC)

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

Editor : Sh. Prabhat Kumar

SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSE (SEC)

Unit 1 : Definition of Archives and Museum Dr. Sujay Biswas

SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

Definition of Archives and Museum

1. Contribution of Western Scholars Documentation and

Conserving the Future of the Past in Present

1.3 Pre-Independence Developments and Researches

Material Sound/ Perfect Condition Distinctly Perished or quite

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