As a South Indian who grew up in the Middle East, I did not expect my PhD research to take me to Prayagraj, a city in the North India heartland. Prayagraj made news earlier this year as host of the Kumbh Mela, the largest peaceful gathering of people in the world.1 The Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage at the confluence of three rivers that occurs roughly every twelve years. I am not sure I will ever be accustomed to calling the city Prayagraj. I and most others continue to refer to it as Allahabad, which was the city’s name until 2018.2 Growing up, I knew it as the city that produced several South Asian poets including Akbar Allahabadi and Harivash Rai Bacchan. It also was home to India’s first Prime Minister, Jawarharlal Nehru, and Bollywood phenomenon Amitabh Bacchan. Based on this information, I conjured an image of a rich city with history hidden in every corner.
In my dissertation, I investigate the financing of primary school education in nineteenth century India.3 I attended a private university in India, Ashoka University, established by a group of industrialists and wondered about their motivation towards funding education. I initially proposed to conduct my research in Kerala, a South Indian state, especially since the region has a tradition of better educational outcomes and literacy rates than North India.4 As I dove into the secondary literature on the history of education in India, I realized that most donors to schools were local landholders and found a clear connection between land economy and school education waiting to be explored.
North India, especially the present day state of Uttar Pradesh emerged as the ideal location to conduct my analysis because the area has incredible diversity in terms of the land’s agricultural productivity. Furthermore, some parts of the region were under direct British administration while others were autonomous or came under British control later. My study of Hindi and Urdu, the dominant languages of the area, proved proficient enough to conduct this research. And so, I decided to visit the archives in Allahabad since it was one of the earliest territories in the region to come under British control in 1801.
The sign (saying I love Prayagraj) outside the airport, visitors often pose next to the sign for pictures. Photo provided by the author.
Since there was no direct flight from my hometown of Coimbatore, I flew to Allahabad from Hyderabad, another large city in India. The airport in Allahabad is small, so I easily departed the plane, collected my bags and quickly booked an Uber. Outside the airport, there was scaffolding on all sides. The city was getting ready to host the Kumbh Mela so roads were being constructed and monuments erected. There were banners about the Kumbh Mela surrounding the airport. The traffic from the airport into the city was not bad because the roads were spacious outside the airport.
Once my Uber driver approached the streets near my hotel, the traffic became excessively dense. The cacophony of buses, motorcycles and scooters honking to compete with each other took over my observations of the city. About five minutes before reaching the destination, we drove through a street full of gun shops. For context, India has strict laws around firearm purchases. The average number of guns in India per one hundred people is around five, while it is one hundred twenty for every hundred people in the US.5 That is why I was stunned to see a whole street of shops selling guns in India. Middle-aged men sat outside the stores on plastic chairs, guarding their guns.
Uber had announced that we had reached the destination but when I looked outside the window, I did not see any sign indicating a hotel. I had been incredibly careful while booking a hotel. Since it was a city I had never visited before, I intended to spend more money than I would in any other Indian city, to keep myself safe. I booked a hotel online, avoided the least expensive ones for safety and excluded the most expensive ones for budget reasons. Yet, the hotel I booked seemed to not exist. A lady at the location said there used to be a hotel, but that it shut down a while ago. Thankfully, I know Hindi and could organize alternative and safe accommodation for myself in another location. I realized it costs a lot more than I expected to keep myself safe in my own country.
A poster announcing the 2025 Kumbh Mela festival outside the Prayagraj airport. Photo provided by the author.
I settled into my new hotel located in one of the busiest regions of the city and went down to their restaurant to eat. From the restaurant, I could see a large Hindu religious procession walking through the streets and blocking traffic for hours. I wondered if Allahabad was always like this or whether it was in preparation for the Kumbh Mela. I became excited to explore the state archives in Allahabad and learn more about the city’s history.
All twenty-eight states in India maintain their own archives while there is one national archive in the capital city, New Delhi. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, the state government maintains archives in four cities: Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi and Agra. In general, Indian state archives are easier to access than the national archive or private archives. To access the national archive in New Delhi, a researcher must email well in advance and receive permission before entering through the main gate. In state archives, however, you can show up on a working day, present a letter from your institution, and an identity card to access the archives.
I left my hotel at 9 AM to find the Allahabad archives. I arrived at the Google Maps location for the archives and found nothing there. When I asked around for archives or a library, no one seemed to know. Then I typed in the address listed on the website into Google Maps, which took me to a location two kilometers (1.2 miles away), but I still found no archives. I then desperately rang every phone number on the archives website until someone answered and directed me to the correct location. When I arrived at the location, I found the archivist waiting at the campus gate to receive me. I discovered that I had walked past the archives a few hours before during my initial search but did not realize it was hidden behind a school campus. I located a small, battered sign outside the school campus, but it was not sufficient to indicate the presence of the archives. A destroyed car at the entrance is hardly a sign that the archive is near.
A destroyed car on the pathway towards the archive. Photo provided by the author.
I told the archivist that the maps and the website address took me to a different location. I also stated that no one could direct me to the archives. “You should have said Abhilekhaghar, not archives,” he joked. Abhilekhagar is the Hindi word for archive. With all that work to reach the archive, I was relieved that I finally made it. After briefly looking through my identity documents, the head archivist instructed his team to assist me with material related to education. “Education boxes are on the top left corner of the record room…” he told them, before he left the premises to report for Kumbh Mela duty. Half of the archives team were helping with the event.
I took an hour to look through the handwritten catalogs of documents. First, I reviewed the catalog of education papers, called Directorate of Education, which contained reports, correspondence, and documents related to school education from 1850 to 1900. Then I examined the catalog on land revenue and land purchases. I made a note of the files that seemed relevant to me and then filled out the requisition forms. I wrote down the catalog list, box number and file number for the archivist. A team of three entered the record room, supported each other to reach the top left corner about fifteen feet above the ground and brought me the ten documents I requested. I was grateful for their undivided attention.
A battered sign outside the school campus indicating that the archives are behind it. Photo provided by the author.
I became excited when I read nineteenth century letters from landholders about the nature of their donation to schools. In London and New Delhi archives, I had read letters from the territorial government seeking donations and in Allahabad, I found responses to those letters. In many ways, doing archival work makes me feel like a detective, putting together clues from different regions to figure out the past. At the Allahabad archive, I also found lists of donors to schools including the amount of donations they made and to which schools. Finally, while government circulars about education policies were readily available in the New Delhi and Lucknow archives, in Allahabad I found the responses from smaller regions and princely rulers to those circulars. The archives in India have strict rules about taking and sharing pictures of the material, otherwise I would have certainly included them in this field trip.
Sometimes I was met with disappointment. There were several items listed in the catalogue which sounded crucial to my project but when I requested them, they were either too brittle, damaged beyond repair, or lost. The condition of the material and lack of funding towards maintenance made for great conversations with archival staff over chai, which they generously offer to researchers every day. The archivists told me that state archives in other cities in Uttar Pradesh perhaps Varanasi may contain copies of the documents I was unable to access, a future adventure that I am looking forward to. After ten days at the archive, I bid farewell to the staff and promised I would be back in a few months.
The trip to Allahabad, while challenging in several ways, helped me better structure my dissertation. With the new material about school donors that I found, I am confident that I can stitch together different pieces of evidence to write a book-length project. I am certainly lucky to have the institutional support to travel to different archives in India and the United Kingdom for my project. Especially given the history of colonialism in South Asia and the fact that our archives are spread out; researchers have to travel to multiple locations and rummage through different pieces of information to imagine the past. While travel comes with its own difficulties, I am grateful for the experience of archives around the world.
Prayagraj at night, 21GauriGuptaa, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- “Maha Kumbh Mela: World’s largest gathering begins in India,” DW News, January 13, 2025, https://www.dw.com/en/maha-kumbh-mela-worlds-largest-gathering-begins-in-prayagraj/live-71280471
- The city’s name change from Allahabad to Prayagraj was primarily led by Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as a way to fight the city’s rich Mughal history. It was named Allahabad by Mughal emperor Akbar in the seventeenth century.
- For my PhD dissertation, I am researching the history of school education in 19th and 20th century United Provinces, especially in relation to changes in landholding. My focus is on Uttar Pradesh because the land productivity and landholding structure were different across the region. Further, some parts were under princely rule and others under direct British rule, offering a good sample for my study. In the early nineteenth century, Rajputs and Muslims lost several estates, while Banias and Brahmins bought more land. Since landholders were the chief donors to public and private education, I want to understand how these changes shaped school infrastructure and curriculum over time.
- “North vs South: Why India’s Northern States are Losing the Higher Education Race to the South,” Times of India, November 18, 2024, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/education/news/north-vs-south-why-indias-northern-states-are-losing-the-higher-education-race-to-the-south/articleshow/115423211.cms
- “Buying guns: How does India compare with the US?” CNBC, August 22, 2019, https://www.cnbctv18.com/legal/buying-guns-how-does-india-compare-with-the-us-4216241.htm; “Explained | Guns and Gun control Law in India,” The Hindu, January 09, 2023, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/guns-in-india-strict-laws-illegal-manufacturing-hubs-low-guns-deaths/article65476746.ece