Central Vista Project: Demolition threatens India’s national archives

Nowhere in the world, points out an online petition, have the central archives of a country been relocated in the manner in which it is being done in New Delhi. Signatories to the petition, scholars, archivists and historians, have called upon the Government to explain who would be responsible for damages.

A large-scale renovation of the National Archive holding area for documents, reading rooms and facilities for research scholars, the petition points out, was completed as recently as 2018. The records include 4.5 million files, 25,000 rare manuscripts, more than 100,000 maps, treaties, 280,000 premodern documents and several thousand private papers.

“These documents are naturally brittle and require delicate, expert handling. The loss or damage of a single object or archival record would be an irrevocable loss,” say petitioners.

Questions they have asked include a) Where will the temporary archive be housed? b) How can accredited scholars and the general public continue to access records in the temporary holding? c) Will there be no access to these records until the records have been relocated to an unspecified future repository of the archival materials? And finally d) Who is managing this process and who will be accountable for any loss of documents?

There have been no public consultations on how to manage this delicate process. Ideally, there should have been a National Commission on Public Records instituted that consisted of eminent scholars, archivists, preservationists, members of civil society, in addition to civil servants. This commission should have overseen the process and reported to a dedicated parliamentary committee and the media regularly.