Decolonising the Archives

‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ at the British Library

Abstract

‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ at the British Library is a research and digitisation project in collaboration with the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR) at Jadavpur University, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore and the SOAS Library in London. It is an extensive and rich repository of rare printed Bengali, Assamese and Sylheti books of which approximately 1800 titles have now been digitised and made available online. This international collaborative project has been running for nearly 5 years now with funding from the AHRC Newton-Bhabha Fund and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, UK. Focussing on early printed books between 1714 and 1914, the project’s key aims have been towards complementing digitisation and research with skills-sharing, capacity-building and working with Indian institutions (e.g., the National Library in Kolkata, Asiatic Society in Mumbai, and Jadavpur University). The Book Unbound, a book history symposium (2017) and two workshops on ‘Print and Islam in South Asia’ (2018) have been organised as part of the project, alongside the ongoing British Library South Asia Seminar Series which offers a research dissemination platform to doctoral students, early-career academics and senior scholars. In the current climate of continuing uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the online digital collection of ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ has been a valuable resource for researchers who are unable to travel and access the physical collections at the British Library owing to intermittent lockdowns and restricted opening of the reading rooms. Through its research, cataloguing and digital humanities aspects, ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ has incorporated some vital aspects of decolonisation with respect to colonial archives.