Name of Department: Department of History

Name of College: Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi

Name of the Teacher: Dr. Sonu Kumar Gupta

Name of the Paper: SEC: Reading the Archive

Course: ALL Hons. & Prog.

Semester: 

Section: A

Paper Code:

Complete/ Sharing: Complete

Unit I: Theory (15 hours)

• Introduction to Primary Sources: Power and Memory in the Archive

Explanation:  This unit will introduce the student to the notion of the archive as a cultural institution produced in contexts of power that allows both for the production, and elision of different kinds of historical narratives. It will also underline the issue of access, and digitization which is crucial to researchers today. Students will be taken for a guided visit to either the National Archives of India or the Delhi State Archives. 

(Teaching Time: 5 weeks approx.)

Teaching Timing: 1st August 2024 to 12 September   2024

Essential Readings:

• Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, Archive and Access, Bangalore, Centre for Internet and Society, 2011, 14-29, 50-81. https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access

• Joan Schwartz, & Terry Cook, "Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory," Archival Science, Vol. 2, 1-19.

  Activities for Students: Read any one Article of the unit and writ an 

Unit II: Projects

Practical (30 hours.)

• The documentary archive: colonialism and nationalism

• Photography and the visual archive

• Gender, law and the archive

13 September to December 2024

This unit is divided into 3 sections containing research projects that use different types of archives. 

1. The Documentary Archive: Colonialism and Nationalism: In this section, the student can choose to do EITHER a project on a colonial text, or on a document produced in the course of the nationalist struggle in India. In the first case, students will understand the making of colonial knowledge; in the second, they will access the voices of peasants filtered through the accounts of the nationalist elite. Students can choose any section/chapter/ pages of the primary source in consultation with the teacher.

A. Primary source: H.H. Risley and E.A Gait, Report on the Census of India, 1901; 

     https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/report-on-the-census-of-india-1901/

 B. Secondary reading: Bernard Cohn, The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in India" in Anthropologist Amongst the Historians, Delhi: OUP, 1987, 224-254.

B. Primary Source: 

• Shahid Amin, Tridip Suhrud and Megha Tod eds, Thumb Printed: Champaran Indigo Peasants Speak to Gandhi, Navajivan Trust and National Archives of India, 2022.

B. Secondary Reading: 

• Shahid Amin, Thumb Printed: Champaran Indigo Peasants Speak to Gandhi edited by Shahid Amin, Tridip Suhrud and Megha Tod, Navjivan Press and National Archives of India, Introduction, xiii-xxxvi.

• Sanjay Ghildiyal ,Small Voices of Agony and Agitation, Vol. 58, Issue No. 16, 22 Apr, 2023.  

https://epw.duelibrary.in/journal/2023/16/book-reviews/small-voices-agony-and%C2%A0agitation.html

• शाहिद अमीन, चम्पारन शताब्दी समारोह से नील की ​खेती करने वाला किसान गायब क्यों है?

            https://thewirehindi.com/7461/100-years-of-champaran-satyagrah/

2. Photography and the visual archive: In this section, the students can choose to either do a project on colonial-era photographs or on online personal photographic archives. In the first case, the student will be engaged with the idea of the camera as a technology of rule; in the second the focus will be on cultural memory and digitization. Students can choose any section/pages/chapter/s of the primary source in consultation with the teacher.

A. 1. Primary Source: 

• William Johnson, The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay: A Series of Photographs with Letter Press Descriptions, London: W. J. Johnson, 1863,

https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008252070; 

B.1 Secondary Reading: 

• Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs, London: Reaktion, 1997, Chapter 1: 'Stern Fidelity' and Penetrating Certainty.' 17-71.

A. 2. Primary Source: 

• The Indian Memory Project 

https://www.indianmemoryproject.com/

B. 2. Secondary Reading: 

• Katja Muller, "Between Lived and Archived Memory: How Digital Archives Can Tell History." Digithum, 19, 2017, 11-18.

https://redib.org/Record/oai_articulo1211444-between-lived-archived-memory-how-digital-archives-can-tell-history

3. Gender, law and the archive: In this section, students will reflect on historical archives are gendered in character through an analysis of a legal text on the Age of Consent controversy. The project will allow students see legal debates and law-making as masculine projects even as the legal archive allows us some access to the agency and voices of women. Students can choose any section/pages/chapter/s of the primary source in consultation with the teacher.

A. Primary Source: 

• Age of Consent Act Report, Government of India, Calcutta, 1929.

https://indianculture.gov.in/rarebooks/report-age-consent-committee-1928-1929

B. Secondary Reading:

• Tanika Sarkar, "Rhetoric against Age of Consent: Resisting Colonial Reason and the Death of a Child-Wife," Economic and Political Weekly. 1993, Vol.28, 1869-1878.

Assessment method/ Evaluation Plan: Internal Assessment & Continuous Assessment