ABSTRACT
Swapan Chakravorty questions the assumption that Indians are either careless or paranoid about archival records, and that they tend to guard public records as private papers. This cultural habit along with political paranoia create gaps in archives that, according to one view, discourage scholars from attempting histories of the recent past, whereas accounts of colonial India may easily draw on imperial records and sweeping theoretical formulations. Chakravorty argues that this view is only partial, and cannot account for systemic failures of archival policy and practice in post-Independence India. It also cannot explain the demonstrable willingness of citizens to preserve and gift archival papers. Of late, such enthusiasm has bred many crowd-sourced oral and visual archives accessible online. Chakravorty ends with a consideration of the extent to which the reliability of such memorial deposits may be determined and who decides on their legitimacy as ‘historical’ resources.
