Archiving federally, writing regionally: archival practices and princely state histories in postcolonial India

Abstract

This article examines the paucity of pre-1947 Indian princely state records, especially those regarding their federalist advocacies from the 1920s through 1940s, in the various provincial archives in postcolonial India. Why is it that archives in Delhi and London have the majority of records pertaining to the federalist advocacies of the princely states, rather than the archives in provincial states that were constituted by the merger of princely states themselves? The absence of princely state federalist records reveals a surprising indifference to the preservation of historical records in various state archives. Indian archival laws pertain to public records alone, leaving out responsibility for the acquisition and preservation of historical records. Consequently, in India, the phrase “archival records” has come to mean public records more than 30 years old; there is no clarity as to what “historical records” are, nor guidance on how they should be preserved. Indian archival laws maintain a colonial understanding of the archive, wherein the function of the archive is to tame history in service of the state rather than preserve history outright. Taming the nation’s history in state archives silences the multiplicity of voices about Indian federation and presents particular difficulties when writing regional histories.

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