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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: NARA

Celsius 233*

25 Wed Jun 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Celsius 233*

Tags

archives, Archives nationales, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Britain, British Library, FOIA, France, Freedom Of Information Act, India, Library of Congress, Ministry of Home Affairs, NAI, NARA, Narendra Modi, National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives of India, National Library of India, Ray Bradbury, Right To Information Act, RTI, The National Archives, TNA, United States

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”

– Ray Bradbury

In a development reminiscent of the Dark Ages and the era of marauding barbarian conquerors, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has destroyed some 150,000 files over the past month in a cleanliness drive. Other ministries are reported to have destroyed documents as well though not at the same scale as the MHA. Worse, it is reported that the orders come from the Prime Minister’s Office itself.

There is no way of telling what has been lost in the destroyed files. When asked, officials claimed ignorance of the contents of most files. However, a few nuggets that were revealed included how India’s first president, Rajendra Prasad, refused to take a pension after his term and instead donated it to the government’s calamity fund. The same fund was also the recipient of the salary of the country’s second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Another file revealed that India’s last viceroy and first governor general Lord Louis Mountbatten received an astronomical allowance of ₹64,000 via presidential sanction to return to England. Yet another file contained the record of a cabinet meeting held shortly prior to the announcement of the death of Mohandas Gandhi.

What was said in that meeting? By whom? For what reason? What did the tone of the meeting reveal about the attitude of the leaders of a nascent nation regarding its people? What were their concerns? On what basis was Mountbatten given such a generous travelling allowance? These questions have suddenly become harder if not impossible to answer.

Seeing malicious intent in the destruction of the files is not warranted as far as one can surmise from the outside. What is shocking, however, is the unbelievable callousness and obtuseness with which India approaches information management. The proper course of action in any democracy would have been to declassify the files and transfer them to the national archives where scholars and the general public may have access to them.

For example, the US National Archives and Records Administration stores over 127,000 cubic metres of paper records, maps, and audio collections and receives over nine kilometres of records every year. This is in addition to state archives, the Library of Congress, university collections, and the presidential library system. Though the United States came into existence only at the end of the 18th century, NARA records go as far back as 1682 to the Spanish Land Grants.

Similarly, the British National Archives holds millions of files, photographs, posters, maps, and paintings stretching all the way back to the Domesday Book, the first land survey in England, in 1086. Again, this is in addition to several private collections and the British Library.

France has by far the largest national records repository in the world. Set up in 1794, the French archives stores records in excess of 456 km, the oldest document going all the way back to 625; this is in addition to the some 1,800 km of archives at the prefecture level. By 1800, the Archives nationales had become an autonomous body within the French government and launched an active campaign to alleviate cities, churches, and private concerns of the burden of preserving old records by collecting and preserving them in public state-funded repositories.

In contrast, India’s National Archives are poorly funded and maintained and hold a threadbare collection of documents. The stacks of the National Library of India, in Calcutta, hold a mere 2.3 million items (2.2 million books); this is dwarfed by the 40 million item collection (14 million books) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, British Library’s 150 million items (14 million books), and the US Library of Congress’ 158 million items (32 million books).

Until recently, Indians did not study their past methodically as Fabius Pictor, Cato the Elder, or Livy did Rome nor did they bother to preserve historical records for posterity beyond inscriptions and rock carvings. Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni is considered to have written the first history of India, his Kitab ta’rikh al-Hind, around 1030. Arguably, this view overlooks the works of Fa Hien, Huen Tsang, Banabhatta, and the several Greek historians such as Megasthenes, Strabo, and Nearchus in Alexander the Great’s retinue. However, many of these works can be called histories only by the grace of semantic generosity – Fa Hien was the author of a travelogue, Banabhatta wrote a biography, and none of the Greeks attempted a systematic study as al-Biruni did. Of importance is that none of these writers barring Banabhatta are Indian.

Whether neglect for history in India is chalked up to disdain, apathy, or a utilitarian worldview, the fact remains that the subject has been given scant attention. Even as late as 1870s, Indian nationalists were worried that they had no linear narrative history. Bankimchandra Chatterjee is supposed to have exclaimed, “We have no history! – We must have a history!” An Indian narrative was required to escape from Western notions of historical decline, inferiority, and progress, a narrative which would instill pride in Indians of their heritage.

There is a strong case to be made that the same holds true even today – the declassification and preservation of documents will allow scholars and private citizens to study and understand the history of their country better; through empirical records, policies on a host of issues can be analysed and discarded or modified and implemented. A whole pool of experts outside the government will be created that can be called upon for consultation, if so desired, by ministers. This would reduce the size of government by not making it critical to employ several experts in each field of government activity. Relatively unbiased scrutiny will also weaken the hold of the bureaucracy on the flow of information in the country.

Narendra Modi had earlier remarked that he wanted to improve the quality of Indian think tanks. This is indeed a laudable goal that addresses important higher order functions of a state. However, how are think tanks supposed to produce high quality research if the data they require is destroyed or inaccessible? Since India prides itself on being a major player in the international information technology market, a good solution would have been to scan and tag the old files. This would have taken far less space as well as preserved the information indefinitely and easily accessible if and when required.

Oddly, broken furniture was also discarded along with old documents – it is beyond common sense to fathom why old and broken furniture would be stored in government offices at all.

The destruction of the thousands of government files may not be of much consequence to most but to historians, it is comparable to, for example, the destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan in 2001 by the Taliban. The decision to get rid of old and dusty government files was likely without malice but also without thought and with consequences.

The Congress had made it a routine to lose files to mysterious fires or to misplace them permanently; there was no move towards making government records easily accessible to the public either; the Right To Information Act is only a hollow gesture compared to the Freedom of Information Act in Britain or the United States. The stunning election success of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the April-May 2014 general elections has been interpreted as a vote for change; here is hoping that the change will be visible soon and for the better.

*: We use the metric system!


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on June 27, 2014.

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India’s Allodoxaphobia

29 Tue Jan 2013

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

archives, Auswärtiges Amt, Bundesarchiv, Germany, India, NARA, Politisches Archiv, The National Archive, transparency, United Kingdom, United States

If there is anything that India fears, then the top slot on that list must go to freedom of information. For a democratic republic, and not one of those only fashionably named so such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India’s surplus of laws that seek to limit the dissemination of information and opinion is staggering. Though I’d love to rail about the First Amendment to the Indian constitution, the notorious Section 66A, and a plethora of other totalitarian provisions that make the framework of the Indian republic, this post is about an often forgotten or ignored topic that is related but clearly not as glamorous as another much-to-be-criticised law, the Right To Information Act (2005) – the declassification of government documents and the (meaningful) opening of the National Archives.

Out of all the concerns India is saddled with, why is a relatively academic issue of such importance? After all, the RTI has, however imperfectly, given citizens the legal right to demand information that was heretofore difficult or impossible to access. Archives interest primarily a minuscule constituency of researchers who would largely write for peer-reviewed journals and other academics. None of this is false, yet to categorise the opening of archives as an issue only a few professors might be interested in misses the forest for the trees.

There are many benefits to adopting German or British archival policies. One is that the creation and professional maintenance of millions of documents will keep not only our history alive but also create jobs for students not smitten by the PCM bug. A National Records service would, in effect, create a new industry, providing employment to thousands, and hopefully dissuading those of only middling scientific talent from applying to engineering or medical colleges. India’s libraries – only by the grace of semantic generosity – are in utter disrepair; the National Archives are unhelpful and unfriendly, and the various state archives makes one prefer Delhi!

Another immediate and obvious advantage of a clear process of declassification of documents and archival maintenance is the creation of area experts outside the government. The colonial mindset of the Indian government which demands that subjects be controlled, not citizens empowered, may fear this. Declassified documents will attract hundreds of scholars from across not just India but the world to study Indian policies on security, agriculture, industry, foreign affairs, water management, and a host of other issues. This is assuming, of course, that the reports on which the government documents are based are also declassified. Indian decisions of the past will receive a thorough scrutiny.

Declassification also helps in making existing “think tanks” meaningful entities. Presently, researchers use their exclusive or privileged access to people in the corridors of  power to analyse Indian policy. This is an unhealthy relationship as the scope of research and intensity of critique can be set by the establishment. Such power disequilibrium leads to either the marginalisation or the co-optation of a scholar by the state machinery – in exchange for functioning within a permitted range, analysts will be given access and some even made into court historians. The lack of independently verifiable sources available to all lowers the value of the output of Indian think tanks, and the paucity of sources and information means that the entire sector sounds like a gaggle of geese, repeating the few crumbs of information thrown to them by self-important babus and/or politicians.

Beyond the pitiable condition of India’s libraries and archives is the general disregard for them. For example, the Lok Sabha library carries 1.27 million books, periodicals, gazettes, and reports for use by India’s elected officials. The National Library in Calcutta (the largest in India) holds 2.2 million tomes. In contrast, the US Library of Congress (LoC) contains nearly 34 million books, the Boston Public Library 23.6 million, and Harvard University over 16 million books. Similarly, the British Library holds over 14 million books. These massive libraries are open to the public as well as researchers, though the LoC does not keep its stacks open.

In contrast to this is the experience of researchers in other countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, or Germany. Clear procedures for declassification exist as do avenues for requesting that classified information be considered for declassification (Freedom of Information Act). The National Archives in London have their catalogue online for patrons to see if there is relevant information on their topic before planning a trip to Kew. In Germany, the Bundesarchiv and the Politisches Archiv of the Auswärtiges Amt show similar friendly cooperation – when I visited in 2009, they had run multiple searches for me and pulled all the necessary files, microfilms, and microfiches and had them ready at a desk reserved for me when I arrived. Archives and major libraries that serve as state depositories are all staffed by qualified personnel in various fields of the humanities or information management to assist researchers. It is also easier to interview politicians and bureaucrats in these countries than it is in India, for mystique seems to be a key ingredient of worth in the subcontinent.

In India, the blanket reason of national security is often cited. This is, in a word – hogwash. These reasons exist in all countries, but advanced democracies have learned that an open approach to information is far more beneficial to the health of their republics than a quasi police state that suppresses free expression and information. India’s experience with secrecy has clearly shown that it is an unhealthy practice; the country severely lacks experts on a host of issues and it shows in the country’s comical daily administration. It is not an impossible task to appoint committees of experts and security professionals who have been through a thorough background check on a two-year basis to review documents for declassification. Various systems already exist around the world that can be studied and implemented in India.

Given the costs of setting up a national system of records maintenance, some will undoubtedly attack it as an elitist project since its most immediate beneficiaries are few compared to other items on the development agenda such as public transportation or education. If numbers of beneficiaries were the only criteria for implementing a project, however, one might question the astronomical costs of providing security to some of India’s elected officials as well as the travel habits of token heads of state. A national records service may not be cheap, but the cost of not having one is significantly higher.

The problems of creating an open society are not insurmountable, though India’s leaders seem to lack the desire to solve them. Between the infamous First Amendment and Section 66A, if anything, India seems to suffer from a severe case of allodoxaphobia – a fear of opinions. Yet it is time to develop a thicker skin and get over infantile sentiments; as India’s shadow grows in international affairs, it will need better informed ministers and scholars. No amount of economic growth, infrastructural development, or military strength can course correct for ignorance and stupidity. By the way, perhaps as a non sequitur, I am also fully aware that were such a declassification project to be undertaken, it will continually demolish the shibboleths of Nehruvian socialism until 2028.


This post appeared on Tehelka Blogs on January 30, 2013.

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