As archivists, we usually encounter puzzled faces at the mention of an archive, especially with folks outside academia. After years working in them, archives, as we have discovered, are used interchangeably with libraries leading to the average person not knowing the true purpose of preserving documents and official records. But as archivists know, archives and libraries are not the same. This common confusion became the catalyst for writing about the archive and its importance, but we also sought to complicate the matter by discussing how an archive overseas functions and the difference between public and private archives.
Street sign in the round-about announcing your arrival at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML). All photos by Marc Reyes.
While archives are often associated with piles of dusty old records, consisting mostly of primary sources for researchers, they are also places of nostalgia, of memories and stories. The archive can be a place where individual lives intersect with the apparatus of the state. Unlike the library, the archive (both those publicly and privately-run) is often a lesser known institution, sometimes not entirely sure about its true purpose and even oblivious to its vital role in validating one’s legacy. Archives are not just full of “neat old stuff” but rather they provide a path through which the traces of the past intersect with the present. Both the literal and metaphorical archival spaces contribute to the framing of future possibilities. We believe there is an allure of the archive. So we asked why and how do archives grab our attention?
We must caution that archives are not monolithic; there are of course different types. Quite contrary to the state-run archive is the private archive. Private archives generally are defined as record-keeping repositories created by individuals and corporate entities (including non-profit organizations) outside of the public spheres of government agencies and departments.
But the difference of the Indian archival experience is what we aim to highlight. As far as India is concerned, the archive possesses colonial roots. The colonial condition had a deep impact on how the Indian archives came to be. The National Archives of India is the biggest archival repository in India. One of the most important features of the National Archives is that it is overseen by the Indian state.1 Here archival documents intersect with the demands of the state. On the other hand, private archives exist in India too. As far as the private archive in India is concerned, besides records maintained by individual families and corporate entities, there are institutions backed by the Indian Government and other funding agencies which serve as repositories for records.
The main gate of the NMML.
Private archives take on a different meaning in India as it’s mostly to do with the nature of documents rather than issues of who owns them. Keeping the above point in mind, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), where one of us has worked (Ankita) and the other currently works (Ankit), is one of the largest private archives in the country but complicating matters is that its primary source of funding is the Government of India’s Ministry of Culture. NMML, as it is popularly known, has a fascinating history. After India’s 1947 independence, Teen Murti House, the official residence of the British Commander-in-Chief, transformed into the official residence of independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. After his 1964 death, the Government of India reimagined the house into a memorial to promote and disseminate Nehru’s commitment and passion for expanding the frontiers of knowledge. It was in this context that NMML came into being. NMML includes Nehru’s official residence as a memorial museum, a library on the social sciences and the private archives as a repository of primary sources to facilitate original research in history. The NMML grounds also include a medieval monument, a planetarium, and a canteen (aka cafeteria) where researchers can get food and drinks and discuss their research findings over chai and samosas.2
While the library houses a massive collection of books on all aspects of social sciences related to twentieth and twenty-first century India, it is the archive or what is called the manuscripts section which is really the heart of NMML. It is a treasure trove for researchers from all disciplinary backgrounds. Being the largest private archive in India, it has distinguished itself for its exemplary range of private papers both individual and institutional in nature. Over decades, a large number of books and dissertations have been written on the basis of NMML’s private papers. It is a place where researchers have spent hours writing, editing, proofreading their papers, articles, book proposals and lengthy chapters. It is where many ideas have been materialized, incomplete stories have found their conclusions and many dreams turned into realities. NMML’s archives have caught the attention of almost anyone working on any aspect of modern India’s history. From a sociologist studying Indian communities to an economic historian writing about independent India’s industrial development, one quite literally can start and complete their research at NMML. It really has become a one-stop shop for scholars across all disciplines.
The door to the Manuscript Section’s Reading Room. Photos are not allowed to be taken in the room.
On a typical day in the NMML archive, one can stumble upon researchers in the reading room, sitting at the desks, deeply engrossed in a large collection of files scattered around their tables. Nearby, the archivists of the manuscript section receive document requests and then execute the tasks of finding the desired papers and bringing them to the visiting researchers. The manuscript section accepts requests for documents three times a day (10:30 AM, 12:00 PM, and 2:30 PM) and strives to get researchers their requests as quickly as possible. On top of these duties, NMML archivists are also photocopying documents for researchers (photography of the documents by researchers is not allowed), scanning papers for the library’s digital repository, and answering researcher emails.
The primary responsibilities of the manuscript section include acquisition, preservation, classification and maintenance of papers of Indians who have distinguished themselves in multiple fields of politics, administration, diplomacy, social reform, journalism, industry and education. In the last five decades the manuscripts section has acquired more than 1200 collections of institutional records and private papers of prominent people from all across India and even abroad.3 The main motive was to collect papers from private hands lying scattered all over the country and systematically arrange them at one place, thus providing easy accessibility to scholars working on any aspect of Indian history.
The process, however, does not end at the mere acquisition of papers. After the papers are acquired, they are given a sophisticated chemical treatment. Usually the papers reach the archivists in a cluttered form. They lack form and a coherent structure. The papers are then classified, categorized, arranged and listed into proper catalogs and collections. Papers are clearly divided into two broad categories, the institutional records and individual collections. Apart from these two there is a category of miscellaneous items that constitute smaller-sized collections.
The museum section of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. This part of the complex first greets visitors once they pass through the main gates.
At NMML, ownership of the documents continues to remain with the donor and a written agreement states that the archive only serves as a repository of these documents. As already mentioned above, the word “private” however takes a precarious twist as documents are not strictly limited to official papers. All documents housed previously with the donor are donated to the archive, making sorting and a form of cataloging essential for the collection to make any kind of sense to a research scholar. Drafts, copies of letters with minor corrections, existing published matter like magazines and newspaper clippings, and everything else which grabbed the interest of the donor becomes part of this private collection. Keeping this in mind, research in any of the facets of the humanities or social science requires a keen eye as occasionally, far more important elements of research are hidden in these obscure drafts and scribbled notes than any official document which might at first seem of utmost importance.
Although the NMML Archives began with the papers of Jawaharlal Nehru and were later supplemented with the papers of the All India Congress Committee, what is surprising for visitors is the sheer range of its holdings. Papers of eminent people across the political spectrum are part of the holdings. Some of the most important collections include papers of leading Indian figures such as M.K Gandhi, C. Rajagopalachari, S.P. Mookerjee, B.S. Moonje, V.K. Krishna Menon, Jayaprakash Narayan, Charan Singh, Sarojini Naidu and others. In the list of institutional collections, there are papers of the All India Congress Committee, All India Hindu Mahasabha, All India Trade Union Congress, Indian Merchant’s Chamber and others.4
The NMML archive also possesses more than 900 transcripts of oral history interviews relating to the social and political developments of modern India with special reference to India’s freedom struggle. These transcripts are fascinating first-hand accounts of freedom fighters providing insights of their involvement in the nationalist movement in the years prior to Indian independence. Some of the important interview transcripts are those of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, T.T. Krishnamachari, J.B. Kripalani, I.K. Gujral and Jyoti Basu.
NMML strives to highlight that archival stories are everywhere; they are relevant to not only historians and archivists but everyone. There is a common misconception that archives are places where only historians go. The inherent nature of the archive is interdisciplinary. The archive functions for humanities and social science disciplines as the laboratory functions for the sciences. The laboratory and the archive are both sites of knowledge production and dissemination.
But for archivists, the archive is more than that. In the manuscript section we have seen picture albums of princes and princesses whose lives were something out of a movie, become aware of Indians who were more recognized in a country like Mexico than they ever were in their own country, and found correspondences which could have easily been harbingers of full fledged wars. We have stumbled upon poetry and prose: love letters, invitation cards for weddings, and some unsaid, incomplete stories in the form of draft letters and notes. Working in an Indian archive can be a difficult experience to define. On the one hand it provides a lens into the larger and extraordinary events that have marked the history of India, but on the other it is a space to pause and listen to the ordinary, to the everyday person and better understand the little known stories from the past. That’s what working in our archive is like.
Stone tablet outside NMML.
- Established as the custodian of the records of the Government of India, the National Archives was set up as the Imperial Records Department. After the transfer from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1911, the Imperial Records Department shifted to the present building in 1926. It is constituted of a vast corpus of records like public records, private papers, oriental records, cartographic records and other official records which consist of an important source of information for researchers, and users of the archives. For more on the National Archives of India, please see Narayani Basu, “The Brink of Erasure,” Contingent, July 10, 2021.
- NMML Manuscripts: An Introduction. (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, 2003), 4. For more on the NMML, see Marc Reyes, “A Postcard from New Delhi,” Contingent, Nov. 9, 2019.
- NMML Manuscripts, 8–9.
- Ibid., 15.
