Notes From The Field | Shafi Ahmad Khanday, Writing history of/in the Kashmir Valley
The writing of history has been one of the most contested terrains of research in the social sciences. Not only does history as a subject remain a sensitive domain for reconstructing the past, it also addresses questions like: Who writes history? Whose history is to be written? And can we write everything about the past? The control of the production of knowledge is tantamount to the reproduction of power. In the context of South Asia, especially, modern history writing has primarily been a colonial tool of control over subjects, while its postcolonial continuity has enabled new ways of command. One such specter is the continuation of narrative control that a state requires for its existence. Nowhere is this clearer than in national archives, where state control of the domains of both command and control make it more challenging for historians to produce writing that is not in the interest of the state.
“Nowhere is [the colonial control of knowledge] clearer than in national archives, where state control of the domains of both command and control make it more challenging for historians to produce writing that is not in the interest of the state.”
The transition of knowledge from oral to written deemed as scientific not only led to the erasure of “memory as archive” but also created the notion of control of written knowledge. The most reliable sources of information naturally became the domain of the state and its apparatuses. Therefore, the archiving of authentic knowledge and its strict control has remained one of the preferred domains of power executed by the state. From ancient scripts and medieval chronicles to the modern structures of administering control on information the archive has become an agency for promoting and perpetuating structures of power. Colonialism embedded with modernity firmly established this “scientificity” in place of the traditionalism of human knowledge by dismissing it as “orthodox,” “primitive,” and “unscientific”. The peculiar contested history of colonial and postcolonial Kashmir highlights such issues in the context of the Indian subcontinent.
The systematic archiving of knowledge in India was a product of colonialism. The Imperial Records Department was established by the British East India Company in 1891 at Calcutta (Kolkata). Examining, arranging, transferring, and cataloging materials started only after destroying a lot of “unnecessary” records. Then, the transfer of British India’s capital from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1911 necessitated the transfer of the Imperial Records Department to the present building, which was renamed the National Archives of India after independence in 1947. Through the legacy of this British colonial “archival regime,” there were branches opened at a few other places apart from encouraging states to have their own archival departments. For example, the Jammu and Kashmir Archaeology and Research Department, which was established back in 1904, now continues to function as Directorate of Archives, Archaeology and Museums. Apart from the various libraries rich for secondary sources, there are three branches of state archives each in the Jammu, the Kashmir and the Ladakh provinces of the formerly state of Jammu and Kashmir (with the reorganization of the state in 2019, Jammu and Kashmir was reduced in status to a Union Territory while separating Ladakh as another Union Territory).
The legacy of colonial state power over archival knowledge of history has continued into the present. One controversial recent development is the Central Vista Project, which aims at re-developing India’s central administrative area in New Delhi. In this project the government is proposing to demolish some of the heritage buildings which include the annex of National Archives of India, its Museum, and the Indra Gandhi National Center for Arts. In response, many scholars, archivists, preservationists, and members of civil societies with serious apprehensions have filed petitions and called for transparency from the government side about the indiscriminate treatment of the valuable records. Scholars seeking to access historical archives in India must navigate these politics of knowledge.
I started my research journey in 2015 from North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya. Broadly, my research locates peasant resistance in Kashmir Valley during colonial times. I am interested in studying the agrarian history of Kashmir by focusing on peasants as agents of making their own histories. My interest in archives was to locate various reports, letters, petitions, governmental orders, and revenue records, pertaining to land ownership, agrarian policies and reforms, police and intelligence reports, taxation policies, agrarian labor records, and irrigation schemes, etc. I planned my archival and library visit in 2016, starting with the various archives and libraries located in Jammu and Kashmir.
Yet, a number of unexpected challenges obstructed my research visit to Kashmir in the summer of 2016, not limited to a mass protest, ensuing curfew, and communication blockade (a surprise Kashmir can give anytime!). After being stuck for a couple of months I had to change my plan. Hence, I started my archival visit from Jammu instead. Despite Jammu typically having pleasant winters while the summers are very warm, this happened to be a particularly harsh summer. Still, the Jammu archive is richer in collections than the Kashmir Archive as a result of being a center of the Princely Dogra rule from 1846-1947. Despite this, there is no online catalogue [except a small list of categories of data available]. To make matters worse, the search for files is very manual and time consuming. Although officials claim to have digitized much of the data, it has not been made accessible to researchers yet. The manual catalogue is both handwritten and typed, which makes it difficult and a lengthy process to go through. The files are grouped together without a systematic sequence. Even the files that are accessible are not in good condition. The building at Mubarak Mandi palace is very old and dilapidated. The files are stocked on racks without much care. I was even told by the staff to be careful of the snakes that show up occasionally.
Still, the obstacles to research in the archives went beyond the physical conditions of the archives. Data marked “confidential” and “sensitive” was prohibited for public viewing. On inquiring, I was told that most of the “confidential data” either has been destroyed or left to rot. Some of the “miscellaneous” categories of files contain confidential letters and correspondence, yet photography is not allowed and only limited numbers of photocopies are allowed in the annex building. Yet, even here, “confidential and sensitive” data will again be scrutinized before photocopies are allowed. Each category of manual catalogues have been given to the particular person in charge [if the person is absent from duty, one has to surprisingly wait!]. Even after two consecutive months of regressive efforts, I could still not collect the required accessible materials.
My next visit was to Srinagar Archive. The archive here is even more unorganized than the Jammu Archive. The catalogues are handwritten and very unstructured. I again planned two months of work but the slow official functioning extended this to three months. There is no room available for researchers to review materials. Much of the data is “confidential and sensitive,” and therefore inaccessible to researchers, here too. Even then accessible data is sometimes also missing -- unless you have “special recommendations” that might encourage the staff to be “favorable.”
After the state archives in Jammu and Kashmir, I shifted my focus to the National Archives of India [NAI]. Located in the Janpat area of New Delhi, it is one of the richest archives of the country, preserving many important documents, reports, manuscripts, images, microfilms and newspapers. The catalogue is available online and much of the “accessible” data has been digitized and made available on Abhilekh Patal for purchase. One of the interesting facts of NAI is that it functions in a peculiar way by treating documents related to any of the states of the Indian Union with the relation they share to the federal structure of the country. For instance, there are several documents which are not accessible from 1925 onwards on Kashmir citing security as reason. The same is the case with many documents related to the North-Eastern states of India. The documents that are shown in the catalogue might not be easily provided to researchers by citing many illogical reasons, including: missing, out for digitization, unavailable, “not in a good condition,” or even lost. Photography is banned, but a limited number of photocopies are permitted per day. There is a discrepancy between online and offline catalogues, too. I spent nearly two months in New Delhi searching for all the required data that is accessible.
In contrast to national archives that obstruct access to materials, regional and local archives offer much more promising access for researchers. The Library at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library has some collection of rare books, reports and newspaper archives one must go through. The National Library at Kolkata is very well managed and accessible for a very rich secondary literature. The library also provides free access to many online purchased repositories through its computer room. The annex building here holds a vast collection of reports and periodicals, despite certain restrictions for photography and photocopy. The collections at Royal Asiatic Society Kolkata are also very good for old journals, newspapers, reports, books and some manuscripts.
Across my research in various collections, I was surprised to observe how the official archives are relatively silent on any form of people’s resistance, either by denying or deeming it criminal. Apart from reading the subjectivity in archival intertextually, it is important to search for local district level and private archives. In addition to this, a researcher also must attempt the “de-colonial” process of locating “native voices” in the absence and silence of official archives. One way to dismantle such rigidity is a careful shift towards folk literature and oral histories for the sake of recovering the voices of voiceless. In my case – or any other case of writing peoples history – where archives are mostly silent or have treated the people's voices as unimportant or criminal, such non-governmental peoples archives become very significant for a historiographical shift from the conventionality of the history writing. More important, accessing these archives allows historians to decolonize scholarship by trespassing such rigid challenges in the historiography. One has to be careful in knowing how forms of authorities are executed through archives and how these challenges can and cannot be met by anyone interested in doing research, whether on Kashmir, or beyond.
Shafi Ahmad Khanday is a Doctoral candidate at Department of History, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. His research interests mainly focus on politics of Resistance and Power, Peasant Studies and De-colonial Histories of South Asia.
To cite this essay, please use the entry suggested below:
Shafi Ahmad Khanday, “Writing history of/in the Kashmir Valley,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, September 29, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/BLGF9419.