Digitized Collections of India’s Memory Institutions: A Socio-Historical Perspective Digitized Collections of India’s Memory Institutions: A Socio-Historical Perspective Bidyarthi Dutta Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India Anup Kumar Das Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India W: www.AnupKumarDas.blogspot.com SASNET Online Conference: Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia December 9-10, 2020 Introduction • A memory institution is an organization maintaining a repository of public knowledge, and enables transition of knowledge and memory to the respective communities, such as libraries, archives, heritage sites like memorials and monuments, aquaria and arboreta, zoological and botanical gardens et al • Memory institutions serve the purpose of documentation, preserving and indexing elements of human culture and collective memory. • Archive is to society, what memory is to human beings • These institutions allow and enable society to better understand themselves, their past, and how the past impacts their future. • The repositories are ultimately preservers of communities, languages, cultures, customs, tribes, and individuality. These institutions eventually remain some form of collective memory. Research Questions • What is the role of some stipulated digitized collections to portray the rich cultural heritage of India? • How the social impact of digital collection of India’s memory institutions can be ascertained? • How and to what extent the said collection of the memory institutions maintained pace in learning and research process, particularly in the context of Covid19 pandemic situation? Objectives • To enumerate the list of digitized collections of selective memory institutions of India • To investigate the role of said digitized collections as the national heritage and to highlight respective salient features • To investigate the socio-historical perspective of said digitized collections Abhilekh Patal of National Archives of India (NAI) www.abhilekh-patal.in Online records of National Archives of India (NAI) • National Archives of India (NAI) was established on 11 March 1891 as the Imperial Record Department, in Calcutta, India. • In 1911 NAI was transferred to the new capital, New Delhi, and in 1926 NAI was shifted into its new building. • Online records of National Archives of India: • Abhilekh Patal (Abhilekh-patal.in) • Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Papers (Netajipapers.gov.in) • A searchable web portal of the NAI, “Abhilekh Patal” was launched on 11 March 2015 on the occasion of 125th Foundation Day Celebration. • This searchable portal was launched with the intention of making the rich archival treasure accessible to scholars and users. • Approximately 2.523 million records of reference media have already been uploaded. • Collection Size: 71,028 digitized documents on Abhilekh Patal Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Papers (Netajipapers.gov.in) • Digital copies of first 100 files relating to Netaji were released on 23rd January 2016 by the Prime Minister of India. • Collection Size: Presently 303 digitized documents available on NetajiPapers.gov.in • Holding departments: • Prime Minister’s Office • Ministry of External Affairs • Ministry of Home Affairs Digitized Collections >> 15 Curated Collections, to bring you the best of our Digitized Records offerings http://www.netajipapers.gov.in • https://www.indianmemoryproject.com • Initiated in February 2010, by Smt. Anusha Yadav in Mumbai, India • The archive reveals valuable information about the Subcontinent’s people, visitors, families & ancestors, cultures, lifestyles, traditions, choices, circumstances and thereby consequences. • www.indianmemoryproject.com/archivedirectory/ • Includes 50 Digital Archives (India + Worldwide) • About 35 Indian Archives • Exemplary Ones: o People’s Archive of Rural India o National Archives of India o 1947 Partition Archive o Tamil Nadu Archives o Tata Central Archives o Aditya Arya Archive o Godrej Archives o Manipur State Archives o National Film Archive of India o Archive of Indian Music o Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library http://www.indianmemoryproject.com/archivedirectory/ • https://ruralindiaonline.org • Initiated in December 2014, by CounterMedia Trust in Mumbai, India • People's Archive of Rural India (PARI) showcases the occupational, linguistic and cultural diversity of India and covers a countryside that the dominant media usually ignore. • Provides oral histories and narratives on India’s vast rural society. https://ruralindiaonline.org/ • https://indianlabourarchives.org • Initiated in July 1998, jointly the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute (VVGNLI), NOIDA, India and the Association of Indian Labour Historians (AILH) • "Archives is to society what memory is to human beings." Archives of Indian Labour (Indianlabourarchives.org) • Archives of Indian Labour preserves any kind of resources on issues related to labour, including: • Personal correspondence and biographical material of labour leaders • Documents of trade unions • Journals and newspapers addressing the labouring poor • Pamphlets, leaflets and posters issued by trade unions • Relevant papers of employees organisations • Relevant documents of business corporations • Oral testimonies, personal narratives of participants in labour struggles • Photographs, video tapes and films on labour • Work songs and other similar material of workers' culture • Trial proceedings in courts of law • Records of individual and collective labour disputes • Papers on international working class bodies • Records of the Ministry of Labour, National Commissions on Labour and other Government Agencies. https://in.1947partitiona rchive.org https://in.1947partitionarchive.org • Over 9,140 interviews have been collected from more than 450 cities and villages in 14 countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh • Searchable by City: Migrated From, Migrated To, Current City • Portal launched in 2014. Directorate of State Archive: Govt. of West Bengal Digital Library of the West Bengal Secretariat Website: http://wbsl.gov.in The West Bengal Secretariat Library, previously known as "Bengal Secretariat Library", was established in 1867. WBSL at Writers' Building, Kolkata, is one of the oldest and largest library under Government of West Bengal. It has a traditional and historical significance. The library has a rich collection of books dating back from the British era till date. Some of them are very rare. Search by Title: ‘Madras’ Retrieved 786 records Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, India Hiteshranjan Sanyal Memorial Collection (https://www.cssscal.org/archive.php) Other Distinguished Collections More Collections… Jadunath Bhawan Museum and Resource Centre- A Unit of CSSS (https://jbmrc.cssscal.org/) • Sir Jadunath Sarkar (10 December 1870 – 19 May 1958) • The renowned Indian historian • The CSSS, Calcutta was initially established in his house, which was donated to the state government by Sarkar's wife. • CSSS houses the Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre, a museum- cum-archive of primary sources. Jadunath Bhawan Museum: Collections Conclusion • Need to improve indexing and visibility of our national-level, state-level and community-driven digital archives on Wikipedia, and other international directories, search engines, and metadata harvesting services. • Our research scholars should undertake a comparative analysis of the lesser-known archives, and publicize their digitized collections through scholarly forums. • Their metadata and navigational features should be well-documented and presented in journal articles, conference papers, theses, and dissertations. • There is a need to integrate available digital archives from India in a single platform to help the researchers and historians in finding out digital artefacts and reuse them in their scholarship. • Interoperable digital collections with Open Licenses should be encouraged to develop. References • Bhattacharya, S. (2019). Archiving the British Raj: History of the Archival Policy of the Government of India, with Selected Documents, 1858-1947. New Delhi, Oxford University Press. • Dasgupta, K. (2019). Where Knowledge is Free:The Journey of a Librarian. Kolkata: Allcap Communications. • Das, A. K. (2012). Digitization of Documentary Heritage Collections in Indic Language: Comparative Study of Five Major Digital Library Initiatives in India. International Conference on the Memory of the World in the Digital age: Digitization and Preservation. September 2012, Vancouver, Canada. • Mahesh, G., & Mittal, R. (2008). Digital Libraries in India: A review. Libri, 58(1), 15-24. • Mittal, R., & Mahesh, G. (2008). Digital Libraries and Repositories in India: an Evaluative Study. Program. • Das, A. K. (2008). Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives: The South Asian Scenario. New Delhi: UNESCO House. • Ghosh, S. B., & Kumar Das, A. (2007). Open Access and Institutional Repositories—a Developing Country Perspective: A Case Study of India. IFLA Journal, 33(3), 229-250. • Das, A. K., Dutta, C., & Sen, B. K. (2007). Information retrieval features in Indian digital libraries: a critical appraisal. OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives. • Jain, P. K., & Babbar, P. (2006). Digital Libraries Initiatives in India. The International Information & Library Review, 38(3), 161-169. • Das, A. K., Sen, B. K., & Dutta, C. (2005). Collection Development in Digital Information Repositories in India. Vishwabharat@TDIL, (17), 91-96. 🙏🙏Thank You for Your Kind Attention 🙏🙏 E: bidyarthi.bhaswati@gmail.com E: Anup_csp@jnu.ac.in W: www.AnupKumarDas.blogspot.com SASNET Conference 2020: Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia // Panel 1 SASNET – Swedish South Asian Studies Network Lund University Box 201 221 00 Lund, Sweden Visiting address: Norlindska huset, Biskopsgatan 5 E-mail: sasnet@sasnet.lu.se Phone: +46 46 222 73 40 SASNET Conference 2020: Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia 1 Content Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 3 Schedule .......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Panel 1: Cultural production and heritage politics ................................................................................. 8 Shabana Ali ...................................................................................................................................................................... 8 Praggnaparamita Biswas ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Moumita Sen ................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Anna Stirr ........................................................................................................................................................................ 11 Panel 2: Heritage and the construction and contestation of national memory .............................. 12 Shahul Ameen KT ......................................................................................................................................................... 12 Debadrita Chakraborty .............................................................................................................................................. 13 Bidyarthi Dutta & Anup Kumar Das ....................................................................................................................... 14 Hamari Jamatia ............................................................................................................................................................. 15 Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman & Edward Boyle .............................................................................................................. 16 Panel 3: Violence, collective memory and trauma ................................................................................ 17 Runa Chakraborty Paunksins ................................................................................................................................... 17 Sujeet Karn ..................................................................................................................................................................... 18 Greeshma Mohan ........................................................................................................................................................ 19 Sumit Saurabh Srivastava ......................................................................................................................................... 20 Marvi Slathia .................................................................................................................................................................. 21 Panel 4: Navigating sites of memory in urban spaces .......................................................................... 22 Pamela Das ..................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Moulshri Joshi ............................................................................................................................................................... 23 Zehra Kazmi ................................................................................................................................................................... 24 Sarunas Paunksnis ....................................................................................................................................................... 25 Ved Prakash .................................................................................................................................................................... 26 Panel 5: Remembering displacement ...................................................................................................... 27 Priyanka Bhattacharyya ............................................................................................................................................. 27 Trina Bose & Punyashree Panda ............................................................................................................................. 28 Mohini Mehta ................................................................................................................................................................ 29 Priscilla N. Rozario ........................................................................................................................................................ 30 Sreya Sen ......................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Panel 6: History writing and the politics of memory in South Asia .................................................... 32 Anisa Bhutia ................................................................................................................................................................... 32 Silje Lyngar Einarsen ................................................................................................................................................... 33 Manoj Parameswaran & Aiswarya Sanath ........................................................................................................... 34 Deepa Pawar .................................................................................................................................................................. 35 Mohammad Waqas Sajjad ........................................................................................................................................ 36 hp Highlight SASNET Conference 2020: Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia 3 Introduction The current debates around the politics of memory and memorialization reinforce that the act of remembrance and forgetting in the present does not exist in isolation from the past that informs them. This mnemohistorical continuity becomes even more apparent in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic which has highlighted, like never before, the structural and systemic nature of privilege and inequality. The groups and categories of people who have been most adversely affected by the pandemic are also those who have been at the receiving end of historical injustice and oppression and in turn also the most likely to fall through the cracks of the meta-narratives of history and collective memory. Further, what makes the on-going discourse on memory politics immensely relevant is its universality in that it resonates with and speaks to experiences and histories of marginalization, exploitation and exclusion across national borders and cultures. For example, in the US the murder of George Floyd and the world-wide protests in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement that it sparked, has brought questions of race, historical injustice, the institutionalised remembrance of difficult pasts, construction of ‘national memories’, their silences and how they are contested into sharp focus. It is not as if these are novel concerns that have suddenly erupted as a response to the current tragedy. How and what we choose to remember and forget as collectives and individuals has always been a politically fraught issue as it is intricately connected to notions of power, belonging and exclusion. Ironically, in India and South Asia in general, the global BLM protests received considerable traction, especially across the various social media with numerous posts expressing solidarity with it, including those from prominent public personalities, celebrities and film stars. And yet, the globally significant discussion on race and prejudice assumes myriad hues and dimensions in the South Asian context and needs to be acknowledged as such. This is so on account of a socio-political fabric deeply enmeshed in and shaped by religion, region, caste and class and their intersectionalities. How, and to what extent, do these play into and inform the processes of crafting and curating national histories and memories in South Asia? What are the silences that exist within it and how are they contested? What are the alternative modes of remembering, marking and accounting for ‘difficult pasts’ beyond the confines of state regulated memorial projects? Also, what events constitute dominant and rightful entry points into the field of memory studies and what are ignored? These are some of the questions that constitute the focus of this conference that calls for a rethinking of memory studies in South Asia beyond the analytical lens of the Partition that has tended to (and deservedly so) occupy centre stage in scholarship on the politics of memory in the region. Conference conveners Isha Dubey (Post-doctoral Fellow, SASNET) Andreas Johansson (Director, SASNET) Contact Info Hanna Geschewski: hanna.geschewski@sasnet.lu.se Isha Dubey: isha.dubey@sasnet.lu.se SASNET Conference 2020: Rethinking the Politics of Memory in South Asia 4 Schedule DAY 01 – Wednesday, 09 December 2020 09:30 – 10:00 CET OPENING REMARKS (Dr. Isha Dubey & Dr. Andreas Johansson) 10:00 - 12:00 CET Panel 01 – Cultural production and heritage politics 1. Shabana Ali Evoking public memory and re-writing histories: Memorials within the anti-caste struggles 2. Praggnaparamita Biswas Politicization of Memory: Transforming the Personal Recollections into the National History in Maati 3. Moumita Sen The ‘Demon’ of Vanquished Histories: Memory and Myth in the Mahishasur Movement 4. Anna Stirr The Politics of Remembering Nepal’s Cultural Martyrs: The Anekot Commemorative Gathering as Political Critique 10:00 - 12:00 CET Panel 02 – Heritage and the construction and contestation of national memory 1. Shahul Ameen KT The Making of a Heritage City: Conservation as Development and Social Exclusion in Ahmedabad 2. Debadrita Chakraborty Biopolitics, Necropolitics and Nostalgia in the making of the nation: Race, Citizenship and Gender politics in India in times of Covid-19 (working title) 3. Bidyarthi Dutta & Anup Kumar Das Digitized Collections of India’s Memory Institutions: A Socio-Historical Perspective 4. Hamari Jamatia North-East India and the Imaginations of Sacred Space 5. Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman & Edward Boyle Borders of Memory at India’s Northeastern Edge 10:00 - 12:00 CET Panel 03 – Violence, collective memory and trauma 1. Runa Chakraborty Paunksins Reclaiming Identity: Memory as Mechanism of Protest in The Blood Island and Shikor Chhera Jibon 2. Sujeet Karn “Grief arising out of Violent Death is like swallowing a hot Chilli” A Nepali Case 3. Greeshma Mohan Remembering and Responsibility: A study of Dalit life narratives 4. Sumit Saurabh Srivastava Remembering collective violence: Interplay between caste and gender in a north-Indian rural hinterland 5. Marvi Slathia Collective violence, state machinery and communities: A study of Hindu and Muslim survivors of Jammu and Kashmir 12:00 - 13:00 CET LUNCH BREAK / ZOOM LOUNGE ROOM FOR SPEAKERS hp Highlight